Before the Throne
by ruth baulding
Summary: As the "extended mission to Mandalore" draws to its conclusion, an exiled Duchess makes a desperate bid for peace and a young Jedi faces a severe trial of the heart. Sequel to On Distant Shores.
1. Chapter 1

**Before the Throne**

**Chapter One**

_I remember a time when Jedi were peacekeepers, not Generals. - Duchess Satine Kryze_

* * *

><p>Obi Wan Kenobi knew that he would die on Mandalore.<p>

He knew it because the Force showed this to him, as he watched from the deep and silent center of his meditation. The ever-moving future spun its slow-wheeling dance before his inward eye, the gorgeous scintillating choreography of possible and probable, likely and unlikely, chosen and fated, enchanting him with its unifying power. His heart unfurled further from the present moment, seduced into the ethereal dance, and his spirit wheeled within the embrace of the Light. He was caught out of motion for one eternal non-moment, and shown this: here, on Mandalore, he would lay down his life.

He was not afraid. A Jedi does not fear his own extinction. There is no fear, there is no death. There is only the Force. He was not sorrowful. How could he feel grief, when he was already swaddled in the comforting embrace of the Light? He felt, perhaps, a touch of satisfaction; if he had to die somewhere, this was a fitting place. Many Jedi had perished on Mandalorian soil before him. His funeral pyre would burn beneath the same stars as theirs, and his blood soak into the same harsh, infertile earth as theirs, the recalcitrant dust of a world which for so many long generations had refused to be tilled by peace, rejected the seeds of harmony and order.

He would die on _he_r world; and as she was the ruler and symbol of that world, he would therefore die in her arms. He was content.

The wheel turned, the dance wove its endless pattern in grave procession - and the Force softly released him, its parting touch a caress of golden light, a gentle sundering like that which had first breathed his spirit out of unbeing and into a mother's womb. When he died, that sundering would be healed, and the same gentle kiss welcome him back to the Force, his part in the dance complete.

He opened his eyes. The ship's deck beneath his knees no longer quivered. Quieted, the drives' perpetual hum absent from the periphery of hearing, their tiny vessel echoed the void without. Silent. Waiting. He stood, shaking the heavy folds of his cloak over his shoulders, inhaling the cold air. It too was crisp, its subtle edge wakening his lungs to attention. The gravity generator tugged at the space, imposing arbitrary direction and weight, balancing the ship and all within upon its thrumming axis. They waited, and Mandalore waited, two combatants poised upon the brink of war before some preternatural dawn.

He found his way forward to the cockpit.

"Master."

Qui Gon Jinn's clear blue eyes flickered in his direction as he entered, any need for further greeting or expression rendered needless by their long years as teacher and student, yoked together in the Force by a subtle, far-reaching bond. The tall Jedi master gazed forward, through the viewport, his leonine face studying the nearest star, the sun of Mandalore, with a solemn respect.

"We have found an opponent worthily and equally matched," he said thoughtfully.

Obi Wan slid in to the copilot's seat, studying the distant sun through lowered lashes. Even the viewport's automatic tinting function did not dampen the star's radiance sufficiently at such proximity. Its corona bled into piercing colors at the periphery of vision, bright spears and martial banners fluttering in the solar wind. The system was a proud and ancient fortress that would withstand any siege, perhaps even the Force itself.

"Padawan." Qui Gon's sober regard had shifted from the star and its satellites to his apprentice. "I am thankful that I have you by my side on this mission."

Obi Wan felt the gravity of the words. They were sincere; and yet also a parting gift. They stood poised on the edge of battle, against terrible odds. If one or both should not survive, then these words would be their last spoken in the tranquility of the Light, the last remembered. "Master," he answered, throat closing, "Your guidance is a gift beyond my power to repay. I…"

Qui Gon hushed him with a hand on his forearm. Display of emotion, of affection, was not their way. The meager exchange must convey a lifetime of meaning, as the single lightsaber crystal must channel a near-catastrophe of power.

"Keep watch," the tall Jedi instructed. He rose and exited, retreating to the back of the ship to meditate in his turn.

* * *

><p>Satine Kryze regarded the sun of her world, as though for the first time. She had been absent from its ubiquitous fiery gaze for months now; the bounty hunters sent after her had driven her and her protectors across the star-scape like a storm-tossed boat. They had weathered the violent storm, endured marooning, and deprivation, and fear, and hunger, and the capricious lightning bolts flung at them by cruel fate. They had prevailed. There were no hunters left to chase the quarry. One by one, inexorably, as they drew near in turn to the prize, the malicious killers had perished. More than one had died on a blue lightsaber blade, gasping in agony, or sometimes convulsing once in wordless shock before collapsing to the earth. One had been hewn into several parts, a swift line of fire grotesquely separating arms and head from armored torso.<p>

She closed her eyes, feeling the deck tilt. There had been other deaths. There had been explosions, and terrible falls onto rocks below; there had been nameless horrors, giant beasts, sucking bogs, poison. Qui Gon Jinn had broken a man's neck, hand to hand, no weapons. But worse than all these, searing across her inner eye, was the line of the blue blade. That blade burned hot, sharp, true. It was more brilliant, more consuming than the star shining ahead. And it struck true. She knew; it burned a hole in her own heart day by day - a blow which, like the star's light and heat, was both life and death. She was already dead, mortally pierced by an irresistible foe. The moment hung suspended, the deathblow dealt but the blade not yet withdrawn. When that sweet agony slipped back out of her heart, out of her life, then she too would collapse and die.

She opened her eyes again, and leaned her forehead against the viewport's cool, dark surface. Dizziness came and went. The star burned uncaring amid its celestial court. It had not saved the men who had come to kill her; it neither smiled not frowned upon their deaths. It did not care whether she now perished, slain by one sent to protect her. It merely burned, self-immolating and ageless. If it had counsel, it was this: _surrender._ That was the only option left – let that blade's edge reduce her heart to ashes and then to liquid fire, burning like a star, burning in unison with the saber's own deep, pulse-like thrum.

But she was a scion of the galaxy's greatest warriors. A people who did not know surrender. She was a Mandalorian. She rose and steeled her heart for combat.

* * *

><p>Qui Gon Jinn breathed out, tasting the metallic tang of the recycled air and then releasing the sensation, releasing the habitual irritation it engendered, releasing any thought about it, or about his surroundings. The ship drifted below him, around him, and he drifted into the Living Force, carried on it through a maelstrom of possibilities and connections, shifting dances of action and intention, into its still heart. He let the giddy tapestry of past and future pass over him like pouring rain, and held fast to the infinitesimal, and therefore boundless moment.<p>

This moment was a fulcrum. Within the Force, he felt the scales teeter and pause. He saw the thresholds illuminated in its Light. At this moment, Mandalore- the entire system – stood suspended between the past and future, which were war and peace. It might tip one way; but then, it might tip the other. He might succeed in his mission; but then, he might fail. Millions upon millions of destinies hung in the balance, hung upon his word and deed. He felt no fear; after all, it was the Force which would ultimately decide.

His focus turned to the other beings aboard this vessel. The Duchess also stood upon a threshold. On one side lay her people's tragedy, and her grief. The loss of her entire clan in the last civil war; the destruction of Kelevala; her disdain for the culture which had begotten and raised her. Loss and grief and anger shadowed this place, and whispered enticements laced with the Dark. On the other side stretched hope and strength; the restoration of a culture; the rebuilding of a city; and leadership which relinquished grief and embraced new joy. On this side lay hard burdens and a rough, treacherous path – but one suffused with glorious, gentle light. Here too lay a choice not yet made. Here too was the difference between victory and utter defeat. Which would she choose?

And then there was Obi Wan. The moment showed Qui Gon the brink of the ordeal, and held him back. For every trial ordained by the Force must be faced alone, and unaided. That was the way, and there was no other. In the timeless present he saw his Padawan upon the entrance to the cave, the dark abyss like the caverns of Ilum, the cold tabernacle of dark visions and crystals full of light. If snow fell perpetually outside Ilum's caves, then it fell in ethereal silence now about the harsh system of Mandalore. Here the Force intended a test, a reckoning, a choice and a sacrifice. It intended to make a Jedi true, as pure and flawless as the lightsaber's blade – or else to break him utterly.

Qui Gon wondered: if and when at last he returned to the Temple…would he be alone?

* * *

><p>The proximity scanners bleeped a strident warning, their harsh claxons ripping a gash across the melancholic silence. Obi Wan flicked a hand in the general direction of the console, abruptly ending the high-pitched wail. He had sensed the approaching ship before the computer registered it. Predatory, suspicious, and self-assured, its occupants flared a bright trail across the Force, heralding their imminent arrival as surely as a trumpet blast. These, then, were the Mandalorians.<p>

Qui Gon stepped into the cockpit a moment later. "Shut down all the primary power systems," he instructed, gazing out the forward viewport, where the approaching vessel appeared as a faint speck rising like a maverick star from the distant planet's hazy curve.

"Already done," his Padawan answered. Around them, the quiet ship hushed even further, the life support system reverting to its battery-driven auxiliary mode, the cyclers and purifiers shutting down, the gravitational stabilizer thrumming to a halt. Lights dimmed, the air cooled, and the decks tilted sluggishly to one side, adrift in space without an artificially determined axis.

"It is a scout ship," Satine informed them, gripping the cockpit's narrow doorframe for support as the shuttle slewed further to one side, the faint pull of the planet's gravity vaguely defining the starboard side as down. "We're within restricted space – we oughtn't to be this close without identification or clearance."

They watched the elegant Mandalorian craft cruise closer, then execute a neat loop above them, maintaining a cautious distance. The short distance comm. chimed on an emergency channel.

"They're hailing us, master."

"Respond with a distress beacon- nothing more," Qui Gon murmured.

The scout ship hovered directly above them now, casting a dark shadow in the Force. The Jedi glanced at one another, expressions tight. Satine edged around the doorframe and cautiously traversed the tilting deck to the forward console, grabbing the pilot's seat for stability. "They will be heavily armed," she whispered.

"And therefore confident," Qui Gon pointed out, placidly. "An opponent who does not feel vulnerable is often the least threat."

The Duchess raised one thin brow. "You don't know my people, master Jedi."

A man's voice, refined in accent but girded with an unforgiving steel, addressed them over the open comm. channel. "Republic Relief Corps vessel. You are in Mandalorian sovereign space. Identify yourselves and your business in this system."

Obi Wan's hands brushed over the dormant controls.

"Not yet," Qui Gon warned.

"Republic Relief Corps shuttle. Identify or face immediate action," the voice repeated, an edge of annoyance coloring its acerbic tones.

"They are quite serious," Satine hissed, gripping the backrest more tightly.

The Mandalorian vessel waited perhaps thirty seconds for its recalcitrant Republic counterpart to reply, and then opened fire. Two well-placed shots slammed into the main drives, crippling the engines and wracking the ship with a shuddering impact. The Duchess lost her footing and slipped sideways, only to find herself caught between the two Jedi, held by two pairs of strong hands. She pulled free and stumbled back to one of the acceleration couches in the cockpit's rear.

"Strap in," Qui Gon Jinn advised, a glint of entirely misplaced humor in his grey eyes.

Satine scowled at him, though she obeyed his injunction.

"Republic vessel. You are trespassing on Mandalorian sovereign space," the cold voice repeated. "You will be escorted to a security holding area. Resistance will be met with appropriate retaliation."

The Jedi exchanged another look, and Obi Wan's hands tightened on the helm. The ship gave another hiccupping shudder and slewed sideways again, aligning with the heavier cruiser above them.

"They've locked on a tractor beam," Obi Wan muttered. His back straightened, and the small, feral grin he offered the older Jedi was altogether too familiar.

"You aren't going to _fight_ them!" the Duchess exclaimed, horrified. "They far out-power us! This is reckless folly!"

"We're not in trouble yet," was Qui Gon Jinn's terse reply. He turned to the Relief Corps vessel's console and activated their own tractor beam.

With a juddering twist, the combined power of the two beams sent the smaller republic ship careening into the hull of their captor's vessel. Obi Wan grabbed the yoke and violently banked their ship, bringing their underside into a jarring collision with the Mandalorian's aft docking bays. Sheilding spattered arcs of dissipated energy and clawed pulsing fingers across the viewport, shorting out lights and circuits in the console. Metal sheared across metal, and they came to a slamming halt against the wing nacelle. Qui Gon poured power into the tractor beam, binding the two ships in a deathly wrestling hold.

"What are you doing?" Satine demanded.

The Mandalorian ship veered off in an evasive maneuver, but the tractor held. Obi Wan growled and twisted the stranded Republic ship around, until their stern was clamped against the larger ship's wing supports. Red lights flashed and blared electronic disapproval.

"The drives are both ruptured, master. The safety override won't respond." Obi Wan's voice was tight, his shoulders tensed as he held the shuddering yoke steady.

Qui Gon Jinn, lifted a hand and used the Force to tear off the console's access panel. A green saber flashed, and a burning line severed circuits, feeds and computer interface panels. More lights died and the ship groaned in protest as the directional controls shifted to full manual. Obi Wan grunted as they slid another few meters along the Mandalorian's hull, their wounded ship shaking under the strain of the overloaded tractor.

"Now or never," Qui Gon barked.

His Padawan fired the damaged drives at full throttle. Twin explosions of white fury erupted as the wounded engines blasted apart, splintering the Mandalorian wing support and consuming most the wing in a sudden inferno. Mortally wounded, still locked together in a furious embrace, the two ships began a long, spiralling plummet into the planet's atmosphere, ion trails blossoming around their burning hulls, scraps and slag spangled behind them in a grotesque confetti trail of wreckage.

"This is _madness!"_ the Duchess fumed, eyes wide with mingled terror and fury as they fell, headlong, spinning, toward the distant surface.

"It's a direct flight," Obi Wan quipped, sparing her a saucy glance over one shoulder.

"Jedi," she spat out between gritted teeth. At that moment there seemed no worse insult in the galaxy. She squeezed her eyes shut as the acceleration and the dizzying torque of their descent threatened to overwhelm her self-composure.

Below the clouds, the Mandalorian ship fired its emergency thrusters. The jolt threw the three occupants of the Republic shuttle hard against the crash restraints, eliciting a few muffled grunts of pain. The sickening spiral ceased, and the two entangled ships straightened out, curving into a controlled dive over a bleak landscape of rock and sweeping dust plains. Ahead the land fell sharply away, in a meandering cliff-face which scarred the barren planet's face all the way to the horizon – a great geological feat, an upswelling of the world's rocky crust along some ancient fault line. The failing ships hurled themselves toward this disastrous edge, their speed and vector promising a swift drop into oblivion.

"Master!" Obi Wan shouted. The ship was falling apart around them. Circuits shorted and sprayed the cockpit with hot sparks; the deck buckled underfoot as the overloaded tractor beam and the overheated shields warped the shuttle's armature. Qui Gon remained sitting, hands gripping the console as though in pain, his face drawn into an intense frown. Satine wondered if he were somehow holding the tractor generator in existence with his will…

The thought and her very breath were knocked clean away by their initial impact. The Mandalorian ship hit the unforgiving earth, and the smaller shuttle was thrown free like a rider tossed carelessly from the shoulders of a belligerent nerf. They cartwheeled in midair and then hit the ground again, with a groaning of metal and a colossal wave of force which blacked out vision and hearing. In a black haze, she felt the hull still moving beneath her, saw the approaching precipice through the shattered viewport, and gasped in horror as they sped toward certain destruction, the mangled shape of the cruiser sliding in a comet-tail of dust alongside them, racing them to death's door.

Obi Wan's hands tore at the restraints, lifted her up, tightened around her in a painful grip. She struggled, suffocating, only half-comprehending, her mind still reeling from the impact. And then the world shattered around them. Shards of transparisteel and icy wind sliced past faces, arms, hands, ripped at her clothing. She was flying through the air, through the broken viewport, into the blue sky, the violently tumbling earth. The stones spun to meet them, twisted, slid, and vanished in a hard-soft heap of taut muscle and cream cloth, a tight protective sphere which sheltered and cushioned her fall, and ended sprawled beneath her in an untidy heap.

Qui Gon's tall figure landed beside them, skidding in an almost perfect shoulder roll and righting itself immediately. Satine stared at his scratched and stained boots, then at the cliff-edge beyond, where the corpse of their shuttle and the large Mandalorian cruiser now slid, in a graceful duet, over the rim and disappeared onto the plains far below. The ground shook as they hit bottom, and a plume of fire-edged smoke rose like a grim beacon, trickling up into the tattered clouds above.

"Uuungh," the untidy heap groaned. Satine looked down with a start and hastily pushed off her rescuer's chest. He sat up, wincing. "I _truly_ hate flying."

"You're a decent pilot," Qui Gon observed, hauling his bruised apprentice upright. "It's landings which seem to give you such trouble."

This earned him a rueful half-smile. Obi Wan's eyes travelled to the dark column rising beyond the nearby cliff-edge. "That will attract their emergency services," he said.

"In which case we should wait in ambush," the Jedi master added. "They will have a vehicle we can commandeer for our return to the capitol. The Force is with us – the city is no more than fifty klicks away. I spotted it during our descent."

The Duchess regained her sense of balance and her customary ire in the same heartbeat. "Have you no shame? No honor? Would you steal from a medical response team?"

Qui Gon Jinn's craggy face betrayed no flicker of emotion. "There are no survivors," he said crisply, with the certainty of a man who has seen or felt something for himself, and has no doubt.

She turned to the younger Jedi. His eyes offered her an apology, but he shook his head. "The Force is …full of death," he explained. "We need transport. You must understand-"

"No," Satine cut across his excuses. "_You _must understand. This is my home. My people. My responsibility. You have managed to slay some of my kinsmen already –" she flung an arm in the direction of the cliff, "before you have even set foot on this planet. There will be no more _killing_ in the name of peace. I absolutely forbid it." She glared at them, at their haughty Jedi faces, at their dirty, sweat streaked Jedi faces, at two tight mouths, two pairs of raised eyebrows, two pairs of disdainful blue eyes, two sets of crossed arms, rigid backs, jauntily spread feet. It struck her how very similar they were, like father and son.

"We are here to protect you," Obi Wan said. He had to have the last word.

Her eyes narrowed. "Then do so without leaving a trail of carnage in your wake," she commanded icily. "On pain of my severe displeasure."

His mouth curled slightly, and one eyebrow remained hovering at a sarcastic angle. "I would by no means occasion your ladyship any displeasure," he growled. The look he directed at her was a burning slap, a blow calculated to stir her anger to greater heights.

Qui Gon Jinn stepped between them. "There is a ship approaching. I suggest we find cover."

The debate ended, or at least suspended in favor of more pressing concerns, they scrambled for safety and shelter behind a ridge of jutting stones. The emergency services shuttle drew closer, unsuspecting, drawn to the crash site as a moth to flame. And the stern eye of Mandalore's sun watched impassively, indifferent to the fate of its vassals, indifferent to the Duchess' homecoming, indifferent to the act of theft it witnessed. Perhaps the sun, like the people whom it nurtured, admired cunning above all virtues but that of strength. It shone on in splendour while the thieves – the Duchess and her strange cohorts – returned to the capitol city, where cunning and strength would be put to the severest test.


	2. Chapter 2

**Before the Throne**

**Chapter 2**

_Far be it from me to keep the Duchess waiting - Obi Wan Kenobi_

* * *

><p>The capitol city lay in partial ruins, its causeways and once-magnificent architecture crumbled and broken, the havoc of destruction punctuated here and there by some blessed spot where bombs and blaster-fire had not struck. The living portions stood surrounded in a bleak tempest of dust and exposed girders, of shattered transparisteel and the lonely remnants and scraps of artwork, furnishings, engraved stones. Satine Kryze looked upon the ruin of her world and saw the broken body of a proud warrior finally brought to a humiliating defeat. Though pity stirred faintly within her heart, a greater sense of justice, of fate fulfilled, overshadowed it. This was the fate her people had chosen when they embraced warfare as their sovereign god. This was the bitter end to which their blood-drenched path led. Here, languishing beneath the soft artificial light of the protective dome, the scarred cadaver of Mandalore lay.<p>

And here it would lie and rot, unless some kinder fate breathed life back into it – some second chance granted by a sweet and merciful power, one which transcended even the ageless might of war and strife. What that power might be, she dared not think or hope. Perhaps the Jedi, who traversed the mangled pathways alongside her, would name this power. They would tell her that all things were possible with the Force, that the future was always in motion. She could not touch and see this power they spoke of. They claimed that it suffused all life, that it indwelt her own thoughts and actions, that it bound the destinies of sentient beings together in a harmonious pattern. Perhaps. Perhaps not. How could one born blind, so to speak, judge whether their words about the Light were true?

Qui Gon Jinn, walking a short few paces ahead, signalled a halt and slipped around a corner. Satine pressed herself against the cold wall of their present alley, a narrow lane filled with rubble and overshadowed by a half-gutted building's façade. Obi Wan appeared beside her, one hand reaching to cover hers as a hovering patrol droid whizzed past the intersection ahead. Echoes of emergency claxons and the thrum of elegant speeder-bikes hung in the evening air.

"They are looking for us," she whispered, her voice no more than a breath shuddering in the dark.

The patrol droid doubled back and made off up the street at a faster pace, a bleeping red light flashing as it pursued some unseen target. Obi Wan's grip tightened fractionally - a warning. Distant shouting, the blare of energy weapons discharging, the tight thrum of speeding vehicles.

"Now," the young Jedi commanded, surging forward like a springing colwar, dragging the Duchess behind him. They sped across the intersection, dove into a second narrow passage, wove through a labyrinth of fallen masonry and pipes, and darted into an even narrower alley, one which might have been the covered arcade of a pedestrian swift tube. They pounded along this sheltered stretch of winding perma-glass for several long minutes, then dove through a broken opening in its one side, straight onto a sloping rooftop. Satine stumbled, gasping as she hit the hard surface three meters below. An arm around her waist saved her from a painful sprawl across the slanting ceramplast surface.

From this high vantage point, however, she could make out the city's network of streets and buildings: the palace, the residential and commercial districts, the public courtyards and meeting places, the grand processional way, the Halls of Honor, the shipyards and engineering sector.

"There." She pointed out the grand entrance to the Halls of Honor, now a tumbled mass of blasted rock and metal. "Beneath the memorial chambers are places of refuge. If any remain who are loyal to me, that is where we shall find them."

A third silhouette rose over the sharp roofline horizon and slid gracefully down the near side to join them. Qui Gon lowered his dark hood and gazed over the city's expanse. "That should occupy them for a while," he said. "I've sent them on a wild bantha chase."

"We should not have commandeered that emergency services shuttle. Such a theft has attracted much attention," Satine scolded her Jedi escort.

"There was no other way to gain admittance to the city without a security check," Qui Gon reminded her, dispassionately. "I am certain your ladyship would prefer this kind of attention to the alternative."

Satine stiffened. "I do not _prefer_ to enter my own home as a thief and a fugitive, Master Jinn," she retorted. "There is little to be accomplished by skulking and hiding."

"You would have been executed on sight," Obi Wan protested. "You are considered a traitor by the insurgents – and they control the capitol."

She turned steely blue eyes upon him. "They control this city because they inspire fear in the hearts of others. And that is not an advantage I am willing to cede them."

If she had hoped to curb his willful argument with these bold words, the attempt failed. He met her icy gaze unperturbed; in fact, behind his eyes there burned an open admiration – a dangerous hint of some passion which did indeed inspire a mysterious fear in her otherwise adamantine heart. She shuddered at the glimpse she had been permitted, and tore her gaze back to the city beyond.

"There is no time for this," Qui Gon Jinn said quietly, his carefully schooled expression revealing nothing of his thoughts. Had he perceived that flash of mutual, disastrous, understanding? Or did he refer merely to their practical plight? There was no way to tell….and as he had said, they had little time.

* * *

><p>There was a sentinel posted at the entrance to the Halls of Honor – a tall warrior in an elegant curving helmet, the insignia of the royal Guard. He leaned on his electrostaff at attention, posture rigid and upright.<p>

Satine shook herself free of the restraining hand laid on her shoulder and boldly plucked a path across the tumbled masonry. The guard tensed at her approach, calling out to her in Mando'a. "Kue va inohoc?"

She stepped forward into the small pool of sickly light cast by the weapon's crackling pulse-field. "Ste ama, " she declared, raising her face to gaze into the helmet's shadowed depths.

The man uttered a curse under his breath and dropped to one knee. "Duchess," he said, dumbfounded. "We were told you were dead."

"You were told a lie," she answered. "Where are the Councillors and the consuls? Who else has taken refuge?"

He stood again, whirling the pike in a dizzying pattern, as the Jedi approached.

"Stay your weapon," Satine commanded. "These are my escort. The Jedi have been protecting me these thirteen months. You will admit them as members of the royal Guard."

The eloquent pause preceding the man's short nod of acquiescence conveyed his opinion of this mandate to the two Jedi; they were admitted, but certainly not under the generous conditions the Duchess suggested. He waved them ahead, into the gloomy opening to the Halls, taking up a protective stance near the Duchess' left side. Qui Gon tilted his head toward the entrance and strode forward; but his apprentice was not so willing to accept the subtle rebuke.

"Your ladyship." He offered Satine his arm, formally. She laid a hand on his forearm, stepping with him into the shadowed corridor. The disgruntled guardsman followed last, casting a final precautionary glance at the abandoned courtyard without.

The passage dipped beneath the surface level, burrowing steadily downward into the earth's cold bosom. Here it opened into a series of chambers, hewn from the bedrock, adorned with massive collonades and many branching side passages leading to the catacombs below. Mosaic work covered walls and ceiling; the tile underfoot was of intrictately carved stone. Glow-lamps of polished filigree adorned the pillars, cast long shadows across their path. They halted in the first antechamber, where several other guards waited. These men had their helmets off; in the glow of the lamps, their aquiline features and high cheekbones stood out in elegant relief. Most their heads were crowned with the peculiar silver-gold of Mandalore's ruling families, though one or two raven-haired youths were counted in their number. Their pale grey eyes raked over the newcomers with surprise, disbelief, resentment.

"Duchess!" One of the leaders exclaimed. He wore partial armor. "You must come with us. Celot and Almeck are here, and many of the consuls. We had abandoned hope that you still lived."

"Take me to them at once," she ordered.

The Jedi made to follow her, but their path was blocked by a pair of crossed pikes. "No foreigners and no weapons past this point," the original guardsmen said. He removed his helmet, to reveal a waterfall of platinum hair tied back off a high forehead. He locked eyes with Qui Gon Jinn. "The royal guard will assume the duty of protection, master Jedi." He spat the last word out as though uttering an obscenity.

The tall Jedi's eyebrows quirked upward. "We will do as the Duchess requests," he answered placidly. He made a half bow to Satine, paused halfway through the arching doorway.

Her blue eyes swiftly encompassed all present. "I must speak to what remains of my Parliament," she said. "I do not think there is any danger here…the Halls are sacred. Not even the insurgents would dare desecrate this place of honor."

"Then we shall wait here," Qui Gon decided, pushing the guard's pike haft away with one arm.

The proud Mandalorian turned his gaze upon Qui Gon's apprentice. "You harbor an objection?" he enquired coldly, glowering at the young man standing before him.

"Yes," the Padawan replied stonily, ignoring Qui Gon's startled glance, the ripple of displeasure in the Force.

"The welfare of Mandalore's ruler is the sole concern of the royal Guard. We are oath-sworn to this duty, and will fulfill it at any cost. We answer to none but the Duchess Satine."

"You will answer to me, if you fail," the Padawan corrected him, in a very low tone. Qui Gon's fierce glare of disapproval and surprise set the Force to shuddering.

"I accept that challenge," the Mandalorian hissed. He wheeled about and signalled his colleagues to take up position at each entrance.

Qui Gon pulled his Padawan to the center of the wide space, a rare thread of real anger suffusing his luminous Force signature. "Discipline yourself," he growled. "Such behavior is nothing I have ever taught you."

He peered into the blue depths of his Padawan's silent, furious gaze and saw the fulcrum tilting again…felt the Force gathered, poised upon the brink, the very threshold of some unknown realm. The moment ached with the fullness of a hundred possible futures, yearning to be delivered. Which would it be? He saw, too, his own impotence to sway the tip of the scales. For the child that stood here before him was no longer a child at all. He was addressing a man, a Jedi, a formidable warrior in his own right, a heart and mind and will forged and tested over long years. The thought was sobering. He felt the precarious tilting of fate. "Obi Wan," he tried again, releasing his anger. "Hear me."

The ancient formula, the formal command, seemed to bridge the chasm between them. "I am sorry, master," the Padawan murmured,…but his eyes slid sideways to consider the fierce Mandalorian guard with a cold, calculating light.

Qui Gon sighed, grateful that his words had been enough…for now.

* * *

><p>Nearly an hour later, the Jedi were at last summoned into the meeting chamber, a smaller hall but no less ornately designed. At one end, upon a makeshift throne, Satine sat in state, surrounded by a handful of the royal guards. In two lines, left and right along the room's axis, sat the elders of Mandalore – grey-eyed, hard-faced men, every one of them, their fine garments frayed and worn, but their spirits as flinty and unbroken as the granite columns of this hall.<p>

The Duchess rose when they entered. "Welcome, Jedi," she proclaimed, ice-blue eyes daring any of the court to contradict the sentiment. "Your services over the last year have been invaluable to me. I would that you hear the state of affairs here on Mandalore. Perhaps your experience may lend wisdom to our deliberations." These last words she directed specifically at Qui Gon Jinn, who bowed in acknowledgement.

"We can, of course, give best council as to bringing peace to your world, Duchess. The Jedi do not take partisan sides in planetary conflicts."

Satine's eyes narrowed, and her chin lifted disdainfully. "I respect your position, Master Jinn, as I respect your integrity." Her gaze drifted to his apprentice and lingered there, thoughtfully. The younger Jedi, standing one deferent pace behind his master, said nothing.

"Almeck," the Duchess prompted, taking her seat again. The assembly followed suit, the Jedi remaining in their central position opposite the throne.

A tall man with mingled ebony and silver hair spoke. "As matters stand, the insurgents have control of the government and the entire capitol. Their influence extends consequently to our moons and sister worlds. Civil war has depleted this system of natural resources, and reduced our infrastructure to ruins. Fear has at last come to Mandalore – an intruder our people have not yet known in all our history. There are a great majority who would , I believe, support the reestablishment of the constitution and the monarchy; however, the most vocal among our leading families and our military have been imprisoned. The new regime offers a return to the ancient ways, and the sort of stability those customs offer. The people have little hope."

"They have been robbed of hope; and we must therefore restore it to their hearts," Satine said quietly. "I intend to reclaim the throne and establish peace. Nothing less is acceptable."

Qui Gon spoke next. "With respect, Duchess, you have few assets. I suggest negotiation with the present regime. A compromise is more likely to result in a peaceful transition than a radical upheaval such as you suggest."

"Upheaval?" she fumed. "My people are imprisoned, or driven into hiding. Their way of life has been destroyed, and an ancient and hateful practice thrust upon them in its place. Mandalore will _not _slide back into its former barbarity and bloodlust! There can be no _compromise_ with such evil."

Her passionate words fanned the court to invisible flames. Heads nodded, and bodies leaned forward, as though moved in the hot breeze of her conviction. She held the Jedi master's cool stare unflinching.

"Nonetheless," Qui Gon countered, "I recommend a diplomatic assignation, to determine your opponents' true motives and strengths. The very fact of your return may cause a change in morale. It would be wise to assess the situation before acting."

She gripped the armrests of her chair. "And what of the political prisoners?" she asked the company at large. "They must be released at once. I shall issue a full pardon."

Qui Gon stirred. "Again, my lady – such a bold move will be construed as aggressive. An act of hostility. I suggest we discuss terms of release first. If you are perceived as a threat, your enemies will not hesitate to rout out this place of refuge and destroy not only you, but all your supporters. You must trust in diplomacy."

Satine leaned back, her eyes softening. "There will be no more killing," she insisted.

"Then be guided by me," Qui Gon replied. "Your presence should remain a secret until further notice. Allow Obi Wan and myself to meet with the present government. As Jedi, we have diplomatic immunity."

Almeck shook his graying head sadly. "They will not observe such privileges, Master Jinn. These men are devoted to the old ways." He paused meaningfully. "They bear the old grudges, and cherish the old enmity."

Qui Gon nodded. "I see. But I still think a solutioin will present itself. I shall meditate upon the problem, and we should speak further in the morning. For now, I am sure all here would appreciate some rest."

* * *

><p>The Jedi were shown to a small alcove off an adjacent passage. The stone cubicle contained two low beds and a bare minimum of furnishings.<p>

"These Halls were built not only to house the memorial tombs, but as a place of safety in case of devastating war. It is fortunate the royal family has kept the shelter in good repair," Qui Gon observed.

Obi Wan made a quick exploratory circuit of their new surroundings. "If this is Mandalorian hospitality, I would hate to see where they stow captives."

Qui Gon snorted. "We have enjoyed far worse accommodations."

The Padawan's eyebrows rose. "As guests or prisoners?"

The guard called Kubrec appeared in the open doorway, bearing a bundle of folded black cloth in his hands. "Pardon," he interrupted. "Her grace requested that I deliver this to you, as you had none." He proferred the cloak to the younger Jedi, who accepted it with a nod of thanks.

When the Mandalorian had departed again, Obi Wan shook out the long folds of the garment and wrapped it around his shoulders. The rich cloth fell to the floor, its hems delicately embroidered with an intricate geometrical pattern. The fabric was heavy and silken-soft – a treasure in and of itself.

"I don't think I've ever worn something so…decadent," he muttered, frowning at the priceless gift as though it might bite. "But it will have to do. It _is _cold."

Qui Gon chuckled a little at his apprentice's discomfort with personal luxury…but the smile quickly faded. The person who stood before him, robed in the sable mantle of Mandalorian royalty, face outlined in the first soft stirrings of a beard, was not the same person with whom he had arrived, nor spent the last eight years nurturing and teaching. He was a semi-stranger, a glimpse into one of the possible futures swelling in the pregnant moment.

"If you're _envious,_ master, I will happily exchange with you," Obi Wan offered, smirking. The stranger disappeared and the familiar Padawan resurfaced, the weird transformation reduced to an unshaven chin and a borrowed cloak.

"Get some sleep," Qui Gon advised gruffly. "We both need it."

* * *

><p>But night, or what little of night remained, brought little rest. Outside, overhead, where generations past had erected the mighty protective dome, in imitation and defiance of the celestial orb, the fretted constellations were engraved and inlaid in priceless ore. The raw stuff of that mineral was the secret behind Mandalorian steel. No other race knew how to make the legendary alloy; very few alive today even on Mandalore could guess at its arcane manufacture. Impervious to every known weapon in the galaxy, it was said to defend its bearer even against the blade of a lightsaber.<p>

Needless to say, men had died to obtain such a treasure. Men had died when its original owners wrested it back from the theives' and murderers' cold, dead hands. The armor itself was passed down father to son in long lines of honor and tradition. Such families were blessed to own such impenetrable defenses. Satine was not so fortunate. Born to the highest rank, heiress to a mighty empire and an ancient heritage, she lacked this one thing: invulnerability.

Her steps brought her to the lowest levels, where the memorial carvings stretched in frozen procession along both sides of the catacomb vault corridor, punctuated by arched recesses where the tombs of the mighty fallen were set. History was here etched in hard stone, in unyielding granite and marble and _shakir_, the planet's unique bedrock. Red veins threaded through the sparkling contours of the relief carvings, stark rivulets staining the passionless stone. Her hand traced along the story of her people, brushing over an aquiline face here, a raised fist here, a distant city or mountain here. The Mandoa were an indomitable people. None could conquer them …save themselves.

She felt the tears trail down her cheeks, soft counterpoint to the merciless glare of warlord after warlord, hard ruler after victorious conqueror. Her world lay in ruins. Deprived of any other people to subjugate, her kin had turned upon themselves; civil wars had raged across the system, demolishing centuries of work in a matter of years. She had expected, looking out upon the sun and its satellites from orbit, to see the glowing orbs of Mandalore's moons and planets spattered with lurid bloodstains, reddened soil.

Instead there was only dust. Forests had been stripped away, the land torn apart by strip mining operations. Lush valleys had been reduced to ash, plains made desert, hills beaten down, cities erased as though they had never been. Concordia, the jewel-like moon which hung above, was a ravaged mess. Life had given way to cold, proud death. She had returned to breathe life back into a crumbling heap of dust….such folly.

For a moment – the first and last time – Satine Kryze considered giving up. Despair walked beside her, offering its hand. She had but to accept its seductive gift, and all would be lost, the last hope for her people extinguished here in the graveyard of its most bloodthirsty scions.

She hesitated, on the brink of accepting the specter's fatal suggestion, when the apparition fled, dissipating into memory and dark imagination as softly as it had come. The whispers of despair dissolved in the cold air as another voice carried over the distance, warm with life, with yet unbroken courage.

"Satine?"

She turned, peering through the dim velvety twilight of the pasageway, its polished floor illumined by the phosphor beads in the curved ceiling. There, appearing from the shadow of the far entrance, descending three shallow steps in one stride, was Obi Wan. The embroidered cloak caressed the flagstones as he padded along the corridor to her side.

"I …couldn't sleep," she explained. "I'm quite well. There's no need for a bodyguard here, you know. The occupants are all quite deceased." Her own humor sounded thin, affected, a pathetic attempt at deflection.

His hand came up to brush at her moist cheek. "I felt you," he said.

The subtle whisperings of despair were replaced by others yet more insidious, more compelling and delusional. She swallowed, willing the new flood of wild hope to subside. What she dreamed of…was impossible. More folly. "Mandalore has suffered much…even since I left. My heart is heavy with it."

He wrapped his hand around hers and lifted it to his lips. Warm breath fluttered against her skin. He kissed the very tips of her fingers. "I know. The Force is very disturbed here. I …can feel your people, too."

She pulled her hand free, yet found herself drawing nearer to him, as though seeking the warmth of a living body here in this sanctuary of death. "I fear my task is too great. I have set myself an impossible goal. Master Jinn speaks of compromise and negotiation. But these will never be enough. Mandalore is like no other world. We know only extremes. I stand alone against our entire history."

"You are not alone, Satine. I promise."

The promise, delivered in gently earnest tones, was nearly her undoing. Forbidden hope, consigned to forgotten embers, flared up within her. Visions of a future in which she did not stand alone, in which the terrible path laid at her feet by destiny was not one she trod alone, flickered in the heart of that flame. Her breath quickened; such an offer was a daring reconnaissance into the realm of the unsaid. He had slipped past the boundary, stealthily, and uttered those few words before any sentinel could repel them. Her hand went to his chest, as though seeking to divine the truth of the words, whether they sprang from deep roots, from heart's desire. They were so close now that the hem of his cloak draped over her foot; the soft end of his apprentice's braid tickled her arm.

It was the braid that saved her. It drew her gaze, and as her eyes traveled down its plaited length, interrupted here and there by a tiny colored binding, she found her attention directed to its very tip, where the unbound tuft of chestnut hair pointed, softly, to the pommel of his saber, half-concealed by the cloak's folds. The weapon gleamed, cold and dangerous, in the pale phosphus glow. It reminded her of who and what its bearer aspired to be. Was already. Had been since before his own memory coalesced into meaningful existence.

"You are a Jedi," she growled, pushing against him, widening the narrow gap, her vision aware again of the epic battle splayed upon the wall behind them.

Raw confusion showed in his eyes for a half-second. Then he bowed, covering the slip, breaking the cadence of their unspoken thought. "I will fulfill my duty to protect you, my lady," he said, with perfect formality. The offer had been retracted, replaced by a safe and bloodless oath of duty. Satine sagged with relief…and disappointment.

She spared one more glance at the battle scene upon the wall, where a warlord clad in impenetrable _beskar_ stood over his vanquished Jedi foe, his long energy-pike buried in the dying man's chest. She fled the scene with as much dignity as she could muster, her footsteps echoing shrill and rapid along the deathly corridor.

Obi Wan said nothing, and did not follow.


	3. Chapter 3

**Before the Throne**

**Chapter 3**

_For a man sworn to peace, you take an unseemly delight in the injuries of others. – Duchess Satine Kryze_

* * *

><p>"I should not be gone long. If Almeck is right, and diplomacy is impossible, we shall reconsider our options."<p>

"If Almeck is right, master, then I ought to come with you. I do not think we should underestimate these men. The Duchess herself-"

"The Duchess herself merits a certain degree of caution, Obi Wan." Qui Gon Jinn's voice was taut with authority. "You will remain here and see that she does not commit any indiscretions while I am gone."

The two Jedi stood toe-to-toe inside the cramped cell assigned to them as sleeping quarters. Outside, the first sounds of morning activity echoed in the Halls' cold vaults.

"You doubt her judgment?"

Qui Gon contained his vexation - barely. "Ideals and determination do not make a wise ruler, Padawan. You know this; and if you have forgotten it, allow me to assure you of its truth. The Duchess had asked for our help, and I intend to fulfill that obligation. Indulging her whims in the matter is not the same thing."

Obi Wan was not so successful at bridling unruly emotion. He flicked his gaze aside, temper simmering dangerously close to the surface. "May the Force be with you," he said after a few deep breaths.

Qui Gon Jinn spared him a curt nod, and left.

* * *

><p>The Duchess spent the morning closeted with her privy council, deep within the memorial vaults. A set of guards were posted outside the double doors to the meeting chamber; and another pair were assigned sentinel duty outside the Halls. Obi Wan, excluded from the reconnaissance mission and the Mandalorians' deliberations, found himself at loose ends. Smiling ironically, he wandered deep into the lower levels, where he eventually discovered an empty circular room large enough for his purposes. Stripped down to his trousers, bare-footed, he launched into a moving meditation, flowing through the <em>alchaka <em>forms in an effort to re-establish his tenuous center in this strange, battle-scarred world.

Halfway through, as he was balanced upside-down upon one braced arm, he felt the disdainful regard of an unwelcome observer shatter his concentration. Flipping onto his feet, he glared into the shadow of the arched door, where a tall figure leaned against the frame, long silver-gold hair glinting in the muted unearthly light of the phosphus-lamps. He recognized the guardsman from the day before, the one with whom he had exchanged a veiled ultimatum. The man stepped forward, his grey eyes flicking over the Jedi's chest and arms as though measuring some unspoken threat.

"Gymnastics?" he drawled, stepping closer. "I have heard your Order is a sect of eccentrics, but this surpasses my expectations. I congratulate you."

"I do not think we have had the pleasure of a formal introduction," Obi Wan replied, stonily. The man's presence churned the Force into a sloppy froth of resentment and hostility.

"Besh Kevvla," the Mandalorian sneered. "It is a name you would recognize, were you a native and well bred. However, since you are clearly neither, I shall explain. My family is one of the oldest ruling clans on this planet. I am third cousin to the Duchess, myself. By legal custom, I am one of the very few eligible to be named as her betrothed." He made a slow ambling circuit of the space as he spoke, his polished boots clicking against the inlaid ebony slabs.

"It must be a great comfort to inherit such honor and privilege," Obi Wan answered, with a slight emphasis on _inherit._ He caught the hot ember of anger which suddenly burned in his gut and smothered it, releasing the strange emotion to the Force. Could it possibly be e_nvy?_ Surely not. And yet…

"I consider the Duchess' wishes my personal command," Kevvla continued, still circling. "And she had expressed a desire that the Guard welcome you as one of our own. For her sake, I will now extend that invitation." He stopped again, in front of the young Jedi.

"You are too kind."

"Yes, I am," Kevvla agreed. "My men and I will be indulging in a martial contest this morning. Traditional hand to hand sparring, no weapons. No doubt one as …experienced… as yourself would like to join." His thin eyebrows rose sardonically as he gazed down his long nose at the Padawan. "Of course, you are under no obligation. Such training is not required even of our own sons until they attain manhood."

The air snapped with the mockery. Obi Wan felt cold rage coil at the base of his spine, the Dark beckoning. How easy it would be to throw Kevvla across the room, slam him into the carven wall with the power of the Force, shatter his bones and his smug assurance that the Duchess belonged to him by hereditary right…_No. Absolutely not. A Jedi does not act in anger._

He locked eyes with the arrogant Mandalorian nobleman. The invitation's thin façade of courtesy crumbled to dust between them, revealing its hidden edge of challenge. "It would be my pleasure," Obi Wan responded, with a cold sincerity.

"Good", Kevvla purred. He swept his elegant half-cloak over one shoulder. "This way."

As he gathered his boots and cloak and followed the guardsman back through the labyrinth of the catacombs' passages, Obi Wan was quite certain of one thing: Qui Gon Jinn was going to be furious with him.

* * *

><p>Mandalore was a difficult city to traverse without detection. War had rearranged the orderly rows and columns of its main streets into a jumbled maze of ruin and half-finished repair; the upper levels of the mighty metropolis were patrolled by hovering security droids, and armed patrols. Qui Gon did not <em>look<em> remotely Mandalorian, either; though the people were tall, and grave-faced, and often fair and blue-eyed, nobody would mistake the rangy, long-haired Jedi master for one of them. He pulled his cloak's hood close over his face and melted into the Force, blurring his presence, staying in the shadows, both literal and psychic.

After a long hour, during which he wended a torturous path through the city's interrupted geometry, through the sharp corridors of stone and glass and shattered memories, he found himself upon the roof of the royal palace – or at least, the half a roof that remained covering the august building's interior. Cautiously, calling on the Force to keep his balance, he ascended the delicate girders which framed the sloping panes of crystal. Artificial light refracted off the protective dome suffused the transparent material with a rare splendor, made its clear surface shine with painful reflections. He groped his way to a joint between two massive steel rafters and pressed his face close, peering through the clear panel into the throne room below.

There, before his astonished eyes, a scene from some forgotten history lesson played itself out in garish pantomime. It was as though he once again were a lanky Padawan, earnestly studying for an exam, seeking to understand the truth behind rumors and legends. Arrayed below him were an elite assembly of Mandalorian warriors. They wore armor – painstakingly crafted, dully gleaming, painted in clan colors, scarred and faded and dented, yet flawless. He knew what they called it: _beskar_. Forged of an alloy known only to this race, and capable of turning aside a lightsaber's blade, it was the hallmark and insignia of the galaxy's most fearsome, most ruthless and skilled conquerors. A threat he had thought dead lived and breathed, and stood already in full possesion of the world which had first begotten it

Qui Gon slid back along the roof's broad planes. He must get closer; the Force churned with warning. As Obi Wan had said, these men were not to be underestimated. He must find out what they were planning, how much they knew, if anything, of the Duchess' return; for to grant them the slightest advantage would be to cede them complete victory.

* * *

><p>The royal Guard had found a lonely vault several levels below the surface – an ancient and possibly unfinished piece of excavation. The pillars here were still rough hewn of the black and red bedrock; no ornamental engravings had been added to the walls' bare beauty; and the floor was a single stretch of smooth, dull granite. The men stood ready for combat in the close, hot air. A single glowlamp had been erected at one end, spilling gaunt shadows across the tomb-like space. A chalk circle had been drawn in the center of the wide floor, and already two combatants – bare chested, bootless – grappled and vied for mastery. The contest ended with one man slammed onto his back against the unforgiving floor. The victor held up a fist, signaling his triumph, and exited the thin circle without bothering to offer his vanquished colleague a hand up. The beaten man groaned and staggered away unsteadily, without a word of complaint.<p>

All eyes turned to the Jedi as he entered on the heels of Besh Kevvla.

"We fight according to the old rules," Kevvla explained, waving a hand at the circle. "Neither man may cross this boundary, on pain of dishonor, until he is victorious. The fight lasts until one surrenders or is rendered incapable of standing for a count of five. There are no forbidden strikes or holds."

Obi Wan's eyes traveled around the group of waiting guards. They were a lean, hungry-looking crowd. Their hard muscles were threaded here and there with tell-tale scars, with the rippling remains of old burns. Their faces might have been carved of the same mineral which surrounded them on every side. In the sharp lighting, the dark hollows beneath their brows and around their mouths lent them a cadaverous, merciless air. He sensed their eagerness, their curiosity about himself. Their desire to teach him a hard lesson, to perpetuate the historical vendetta.

Kevvla smiled wanly. "Kubrec," he called out, summoning a younger member of the company forward into the circle. "You will be matched against Kenobi. Let us see what these legendary Jedi warriors are made of."

Kubrec stepped over the boundary line confidently, crouching in a battle-ready stance, his hands lightly curled into fists. Obi Wan hesitated. He had no argument with Kubrec, or with any of the Duchess' personal escort…except perhaps Kevvla himself. And that was not a disagreement of his own choosing.

"You disappoint me," Kevvla sneered, perceiving his ambivalence about the contest. "I would have thought a Jedi more than willing to test his skills in a fair match. I promise you, the rebels who control our planetary government are no less skilled than we; how do you propose to protect the Duchess when you can't face a challenge among friends?"

The young Jedi stepped over the chalk line. Kevvla had a point. If he was to face off against the Mandalorian insurgency – as seemed inevitable – then he may as well learn the intricacies of their martial combat system. He had studied hard and long at the Temple, and honed his skills in many desperate situations alongside Qui Gon, but the mysteries of Mandalore's fighting style were a closely guarded secret, a discipline taught exclusively to the Mandoa people. If they knew nothing of lightsaber combat, then it was just as certain that he knew nothing of the prowess which made these people such iconic figures of warfare. It was high time he learned something of them, before it was too late.

Kubrec moved first, lunging forward, striking with his left fist as his right arm grabbed for the Jedi's braid. Obi Wan blocked the blow, struck Kubrec in the ribs, slipped aside as another blow was aimed at his jaw, and gasped as Kubrec twisted the braid three times round his own clenched fist and yanked hard. Obi Wan's head snapped down; he used the momentum to slam his skull into Kubrec's midriff. The Mandalorian staggered, grappled him about the chest and lifted him off the ground. Obi Wan twisted, wrapped a leg about his foe's knee, jerked backwards. They landed together on the hard floor, their breath leaving them in a harsh jerk. They rolled apart. Kubrec was a split-second behind his opponent. Obi Wan whirled to deliver a roundhouse to the man's head, but Kubrec ducked and hit him in the thigh. He twisted away, sloppily. Kubrec jumped on his back, seized his throat in a tight grip. He bent, heaved, turned the Mandalorian over one shoulder. Kubrec held on through the throw, bringing Obi Wan down on top of his knee, driving the joint into the Jedi's stomach. Punches flew; they blocked at furious speed, parted, leapt back together. Kubrec glared, lunged in fast, dealing a blow to the Padawans' chin. Obi Wan turned a tight backflip, his right foot coming up as he twisted in mid-air to connect solidly with Kubrec's own chin. The Mandalorian was thrown back across the circle's border, and sprawled on the hard floor, panting.

The young Jedi hastily stepped out of the circle, rubbing at his new bruises and aching jaw. That had been a learning experience, no doubt about it. The royal Guard muttered appreciatively, stirring with eagerness. The Force rippled with a new sentiment: grudging respect.

"You fought well, Jedi," Kubrec nodded to him, resuming his place among the others. "You should have been born a Mandalorian." A few of the others murmured their assent. Kevvla scowled and snorted his disgust.

"A fine start," he grunted. "But you have yet to convince _me_." He removed his own cape and boots, unclasped greaves and armor, loosened the tunic beneath. "I wonder if you will do me the same courtesy."

* * *

><p>The Mandalorians did not seem to make use of serving droids; or perhaps the endless civil wars had demanded the sacrifice of every scrap of circuitry and metal to their own boundless appetite. For a while Qui Gon found himself frustrated; but the Force provided a way. He discovered an elderly servant – he might have been a butler or a misplaced palace courier – loitering near one of the back entrances. A mind trick persuaded the man to admit him into a storage level – though the Force's influence even over the doddering ancient Mandalorian was short-lived.<p>

Danger eddying around him now, the Force shuddering delicately, telling him that he trod upon the thinnest ice, that a single misstep would be his death, Qui Gon threaded his way through the mercifully empty palace. There were, of course, ventilation shafts; there were balconies and hidden corridors. There were Mandalorians everywhere. He lurked for long stretches in one place, daring to venture further only when every trace of sentient presence had drifted away. It was vexing to him to undertake such sneaking, indirect work – he by far preferred a bold, direct approach, or a smooth manipulation by way of diplomacy. This spying and prying, as he privately nicknamed such activities, was one of the reasons a man his age might have a Padawan.

The thought stung, reminded him of the brewing argument, the unfinished tussle of wills between himself and his apprentice. But it did not matter now; this was the present moment, and he had his task. At long last his opportunity presented itself, no more than a hint whispering in the Force's gentle currents. He took it, and slipped into the service corridor behind the throne room's dais, into an alcove where weapons were stacked in neat rows. Through the wall, his sensed honed to a penetrating focus, he listened to a snatch of conversation in the chamber beyond. The _beskar_-clad warriors were in council again.

"If what he reports is true, then we should move at once. We should raid the Halls tonight and execute not only the Duchess but the traitorous court as well."

"Silence," a second voice commanded. "The people will revolt. There is not a coward among us on all this planet. All those too weak to merit the name Mandalorian have been scoured away; those that remain are not to be forgotten. While the old court merely withers away in exile, they will do nothing."

"The rebels will not be so idle, though," a third man pointed out. "They will be planning a coup. We must strike before they do."

The second voice, presumably the leader, scoffed at this. "They do not have the power to arrange an usurpation. And my brother will tell us all that we need; they can make no move without our foreknowledge."

"But he said they have two Jedi with them."

There was a murmur of anger, of bloodlust. Not a tremor of fear, not a single note of hesitance, colored their rich tapestry of hatred and self-confidence. "Good," the leader smiled coldly.

Qui Gon clenched his jaw, and slipped away before he was discovered and the total count of Jedi reduced to a young and beleaguered _one_.

* * *

><p>Wordlessly, the opponents re-entered the stark white circle, readying themselves for combat. They crouched, a handswidth apart, waiting a signal, a flicker of motion on the other's part. Kevvla's pale hair fell over both shoulders. His hard eyes bored into the Jedi's, as empty and hollow as the carven visages of the ancient warlords etched in the sculpted battlefields above.<p>

The guardsmen chanted something, a strange mantra in their own native dialect, the meaning of which was drowned in the stormy Force. Obi Wan knew that for the observers, this contest was far more than a friendly sparring match; far more than a venue for settling a personal grudge. He represented the entire Order, and these men their own tradition. Their respect or contempt was his to earn.

Kevvla leaned forward, until his snarling lips breathed cold words in the space between them, unheard by any else. "You will not touch the Duchess again, you whore-spawned Jedi filth."

They clashed. The Force eddied dark with the stain of fury. Blows connected with shoulders, ribs, abdomens. They pummeled and blocked in a lightning fast cadence, twisting apart and assaulting each other with flying kicks, savage sweeping strikes to head, neck, chest. They grappled, twisted, fingers digging deep into exposed flesh, leaving long trailing bruises. Kevvla slammed his forehead against the Jedi's nose, slammed a fist into his chin, kicked his legs out from beneath him, thrust a knee into his back, wrapped his fingers in the nerf-tail of hair at the back of his enemy's head and shoved his forehead against the floor, with a crack. Obi Wan gasped, senses reeling. Kevla bore down on his ribs, the five-count slipping away through time's fingers.

A Force-enhanced shove sent Kevvla slewing into the floor beside his opponent. Dizzy, Obi Wan surged to his feet, aimed a kick at Kevvla's belly, leapt clear of a savage blow, crashed against the Mandalorian again as they barreled into each other, chests heaving with effort and mutual pain. Obi Wan's knuckles split along Kevvla's jaw; the white-silver hair was spattered with fine droplets of red. With a roar, Kevvla returned the favor, and they twisted together again. The Mandalorian brough t a knee into his foe's groin; when the Jedi doubled over, he seized his right arm and neatly dislocated the shoulder, popping the joint out of place with an audible snap, eliciting a sharp cry of pain.

At that moment, Obi Wan wondered whether _this_ was the ordained moment of his death; for in the Force, turgid with savage bloodlust, with a mindless envy and hatred, he felt Kevvla's utter willingness to kill him and have done with it. His shoulder radiated a numbing fire, and his vision swam with it as the merciless guardsman twisted the damaged limb further, sending the Padawan onto his knees. Kevvla was fighting not for honor, or for skill, or even for vengeance. He was fighting for the Duchess. His desire rang out in the Force, a hot coal of possessive pride, of consuming lust.

The Padawan's hard-earned control slipped. The Force poured through him, hot with protective rage, a torrent of raw power. Obi Wan raised his free hand, summoned its limitless depths, seized Kevvla in a relentless grip, and hurled him into the floor, his back slamming into the black marble. Kevvla clawed at him, fingers curled in a paroxysm of hate, searching for his throat. They sprawled, writhing upon the black floor, while the others gathered close, shouting and chanting. The young Jedi shuddered as he drew in the Force's power one more time, and released it with a ear-splitting yell. His blood burned as the power surged through him, out of him, lifting and throwing his murderous enemy into the air, into the ceileing above, into the wall beyond. Kevvla slumped and slid to the ground, a dull smear of blood streaking the wall where he had hit.

Obi Wan rolled clear of the circle, a hollow chill penetrating his bones. He had done it – he had teetered on the edge of destruction, very nearly permitted the Dark entrance. He felt his insides revolt, the acid rise of bile in his throat. His shoulder burned with fire, with a throbbing pain that beat in his pulse. The Mandalorians were shouting at him, their faces full of admiration and fierce approval, of …loyalty. He sucked in a breath, stood. The world spun. Kevvla groaned, his head lolling. Ugly bruises spread over his nose and cheeks. Blood seeped from his nostrils, dribbled down his sweat-drenched chest. Obi Wan waved a hand at the men surrounding him. "We're finished," he told them. "Go back to your duties."

And they obeyed him, readily.

He saw them leave, saw Kevvla dragged away by two stalwart companions. His knees buckled and he grabbed for a wall. Summoning his things into his arms with the Force, he stumbled up the passage behind them, sick in body and spirit.

* * *

><p>Qui Gon dragged himself wearily through the Halls' upper passages, and into the tiny guest quarters assigned to his and his Padawan's use. Thoughts of what he had witnessed – plans of attack, stratagems and means of deception – the harsh truth of what this insurgency represented – all these were immediately driven from his mind by the sight that greeted him. His apprentice knelt upon the floor, torso and face covered in nasty bruising, one arm hanging at a grotesque angle, clearly disclocated. His Force presence was a contracted sphere, utterly unreadable – as steely as the legendary Mandalorian <em>beskar,<em> armor which could turn aside even a lightsaber's blade.

Alarmed, Qui Gon sank onto his knees beside the Padawan. "Obi Wan."

The young Jedi opened his eyes, met Qui Gon's gaze, held it. The older man felt the change, felt the poison working deep. Felt the subtle war of loyalties, the hammer-blows already falling against tempered steel, beating resolve thin, testing the depth of commitment. He felt the tender green shoots of something else, too - a lovely exquisite thing which had no place in a Jedi's heart. That delicate sapling already possessed long, tangled roots, made a claim upon depths which by right belonged only to the Order, to the will of the Force. The change was imperceptible, complete and shocking. Qui Gon wouldn't be surprised if his apprentice had a physical fever - if this young man was even his apprentice anymore. Things had become blurred here on Mandalore…they had entered the time of trial, and identities were grayed, as clouded and uncertain as the ever-changing future.

Qui Gon raised one hand to brush questing fingers over the Padawans' injuries. Even without the Force, he knew the signs of a brutal fight when he saw one. He wondered who had got the better of it – and who the other participant had been. There was no echo of danger here within the Halls of Honor- there could not have been an enemy invasion, or any exterior threat. Besides, anyone wielding a lightsaber would not have let an opponent in so close under his guard. He strongly suspected some voluntary, juvenile indulgence in fisticuffs. "Let me see your shoulder," he commanded.

Obi Wan issued no objection, so he gingerly took the injured and swollen limb between his hands and cautiously positioned it, feeling the joint with his fingers. His apprentice closed his eyes and breathed out, a subtle tremor of anticipation passing down his back. Qui Gon twisted his mouth in a rueful, half-apologetic smile, and deftly popped the joint back into place.

"Sith-spit!" Obi Wan snarled through gritted teeth. He folded over until his forehead touched the floor. "….._blast_ it…"

"Enough melodrama, Padawan," Qui Gon interrupted. "Now let's hear the story."

His battered apprentice uncurled, and turned up a face pinched white with pain. "The captain of the royal Guard," he said, succinctly. "Besh Kevvla."

"And what, pray tell, would inspire you to tangle with an elite Mandalorian commando? Our mission is to protect the Duchess from harm and aid in the establishment of peace in this system."

"I know, master." Obi Wan's brows beetled together, in a ferocious scowl. "Kevvla has designs upon the Duchess…upon her honor."

Qui Gon ran one hand over his face. He was far, far too old for this. "That is hardly your concern," he said severely. "I need not point out the error of your ways, I hope." He stood and crossed the room, blocking out the unexpected flare of hot anger in his own breast. How _dare_ Obi Wan behave in such a manner? And who was this person, this stranger who called himself by that name? He suppressed the feeling with unaccustomed difficulty. "We are pitted against a ruthless and skilled adversary," he added. "Center your focus and guard your heart, Obi Wan – or the consequences could be disastrous."

He received no verbal reply; but he felt the blow strike home, deeper and more painful than the many dull wounds inflicted by Besh Kevvla. While compassion urged him to turn around, to say something more – perhaps even apologize - Qui Gon stayed silent. For he also felt the hot vein of resentment, of defiance, which rose to meet his words. He and his Padawan were rapidly approaching a crossroads – a point of no return. A faint sliver of fear joined the smoldering anger within. He turned to the Living Force for refreshment, for serenity.

They spent a miserable night, each deep in meditation, each sunk in the Force's currents – and yet at the same time, infinitely apart. Mandalore had achieved its first deadly victory.


	4. Chapter 4

**Before the Throne**

**Chapter 4**

"_After all these years, Duchess, you are as beautiful as ever."_

"_Kind words from a man who accuses me of treason."_

_-Obi Wan Kenobi and Satine Kryze_

* * *

><p>"You wished to speak with me?"<p>

Satine Kryze stood outlined in the morning's first unsullied light, which spilled down upon her from a deep-inset skylight in one of the Hall's upper levels. The artificial radiance, made to imitate the sun, paled in comparison to the white-gold fire sharply crowning her head. Her unbound hair, free of ornament, free of headdress, dropped in a soft cascade to her waist. Yet her back was as rigid as the columns flanking the doorway and walls; and the Force was roiling with her displeasure.

She turned, eyes a shocking contrast to the fire burning along her silhouette, within her heart. Her gaze was a wall of ice. "Pray tell me why Besh Kevvla was unable to report for duty this morning…due to injuries."

Obi Wan stood his ground, caught between the piercing cold of her regard and the hot sparks of anger fluttering, invisible, about her in the Force. Elemental, strangely soft, she mesmerized him. Her wrath drew him in, like a helpless moth. It confounded him, eluded his mind's grasp. It played upon his already aching heart, strung taut from the near-conflict with Qui Gon the previous evening.

He could not, of course, tell her the truth. He settled for what the Temple masters called a _point of view._ "It is necessary, sometimes, my lady, to practice the martial arts. They are not cultivated by inaction. Your private Guard knows this as well as I do. …I am sorry that Kevvla was hurt."

She stepped closer, leaving the beam of light, but still bathed in her own painful radiance, her own ignited temper. "Do not take me for a fool," she hissed, her cold, cold eyes narrowing. Beneath the delicate, almost transparently golden lashes, twin circles of blue branded him with disdain, with acute favor. He almost stepped back. They were too close.

"Do not take me for a coward," he growled back. "My business with Kevvla is my own concern. Your ladyship would do well to abstain from interference." He meant it; she must not be involved. She must not know the reason behind the violent confrontation. To reveal that secret would be to utter the unspoken, the damning and forbidden truth.

"Coward?" she repeated, closing the gap further, the ice in her eyes sinking into his bones, into his blood, skewering him in place. "A man who loves violence as much as you do, Obi Wan Kenobi, is a coward to his despicable core."

She thought him a lover of violence? His bruised and tender ribs throbbed their objection. His belly, still uneasy, still twisting with the memory of his near-brush with Darkness, lurched within him. No! That was unfair, and untrue, and …ungrateful.

"I expect nothing more of Kevvla,"she continued, much softer, her voice like the touch of her silken gown. Regret and bitter wisdom chimed, sonorous, within her words. She looked wistfully beyond him, and then sharpened her focus again, spearing straight through him, to the depths where he writhed helpless under her embittered scrutiny. "But from you…..I hoped for better."

The hard slap of her open palm against his cheek caught him quite off guard. The blow fell with a sharp and passionate clarity, a lightning strike worthy of her Mandalorian ancestors. He reeled inwardly, the hot flush upon his skin answering her reprimand like some truant child caught in flagrante. _Presumptuous, insufferable woman!_

She raised a contemptuously arched eyebrow, her last lingering glance over one shoulder a smothering glacial wall, and walked away, leaving behind a trail of smoldering fury now fretted with icy flakes of snow, betrayal and disappointment and lofty, unattainable expectation..

He bowed to her retreating back, silently fuming, and wondered: why did the Duchess hold as much sway over his heart and mind as the combined mandate of the entire Jedi Council? How could that _be? _But he had a very bad feeling that he already knew the answer.

* * *

><p>Qui Gon Jinn waited for the Duchess to keep their private appointment, before the official meeting of her council. She was late – and when she did appear, her color was high, her mouth twisted taut with some difficult emotion. The Force conveyed her churning unrest, but not its cause and origin. In the shadows cast by her racing thoughts, he detected the penumbral echo of a familiar voice and face: Obi Wan.<p>

_Now is not the time for this. Force help us all. _"May I speak privately with you, my lady?" he said aloud.

"Of course, Master Jinn." She was as self-controlled as any Jedi initiate. No ordinary observer would have guessed at her inner turmoil. They withdrew to a side alcove as her court filed into the meeting chamber, flanked by the royal Guard.

"There is a traitor among us," he told her bluntly. "Say nothing of importance and reach no agreement upon your next step until we have discovered his identity."

Her face paled, the rosy flush of private anger fading as quickly as a thassal-lily on Felucia. "A traitor?" she whispered. "Impossible."

"Your enemies are many; and they have an ally among those here," he insisted, holding her disbelieving and superior gaze. "I recommend extreme caution, especially in council this morning."

"If what you say is true," she said, her back straightening, "Then I have all the more reason to confront the usurpers. Nothing is to be gained by waiting when there is a spy in our midst. The longer I delay, the more advantage I grant the enemy."

Qui Gon shifted impatiently. The woman had more misplaced confidence than an adolescent piloting his first air-speeder. "Duchess," he began again, "You must be patient. Let me locate this threat and deal with it before you commit to a path of folly."

The suggestion crashed impotently against her icy will. "The only path of folly," she corrected him haughtily, "Is one which trusts in violence more than peace. I know what you intend, master Jedi. And I do not approve. Your recommendation of patience I shall heed…but only for so long. My court is waiting," she added, dismissing him with a imperious wave of the hand. She paused, halfway through the doorway, voice dropping to a low murmur. "And I am well aware of whom I may and may not trust."

She swept over the threshold, and he followed, disgruntled, stationing himself on the periphery near the doors. Across the room, separated from him by an abyss immeasurable in meters or even lightyears, stood his Padawan. The two Jedi and the Guard and the court waited as the Duchess took her seat at the head of the assembly. The meeting began at once; runners and informants had reported in that night, in the early hours of the morning. The people of Mandalore did not know of the Duchess' return; they lived in fear of the new regime, but had no hope of replacing it with anything better. The councilors felt that the citizenry would, however, rally to the cause should the hereditary ruler reappear and give them some cause for hope, hold out some real alternative. In the face of a public uprising, the insurgents would surely withdraw. They numbered less than a score, and had a few hundred warriors drafted to their service.

"If the dissidents imprisoned by your ladyship's enemies were to be released and pardoned," Almeck suggested, "I believe the city would rise to support you, Duchess. A public appearance and a declaration of sovereignty would stir our people to action."

"_Peaceful_ action," Satine replied. "There will be no violent uprising. If this is to be accomplished, it will be on strictly non-violent terms."

The court broke into muttering and grumbling confusion, the hubbub quickly reaching a crescendo of dubious protest.

"Silence!" the Duchess commanded, rising from the throne in a blaze of furious authority. Her makeshift Parliament gaped, and subsided into a stunned quietude. "It shall be as I say, or not at all. That is my final word. I can see that little more will be accomplished today; I bid you all think on this matter further. We shall convene again when you are ready to see reason."

Chastised and dismissed, the Mandalorian leaders grudgingly stood and made for the exits, their dismay and doubt staining the Force with muddy smears of indecision. In the swirling muck of their emotions, the Duchess burned like a steady flame. And opposite, at the room's far end, an even brighter flame burned – a twin beacon light, answering to that lonely signal with its own dauntless flare of light.

Qui Gon took a deep breath and prepared for battle. Slipping through the milling crowd, he reached the doorway a half-pace ahead of his Padawan, stepping into his path to bar the exit. Obi Wan halted, raised an eyebrow, set his jaw. Around them, behind them, the council chamber emptied, leaving the two Jedi locked in silent opposition.

They stood for a moment, unconsciously imitating each other's posture, arms crossed loosely over chests, feet planted apart. The Force echoed clear and strong between them, its scintillating rays multiplying endlessly down the mirrored corridors of their two wills. Qui Gon realized that he had perhaps done his job too well: for here was his student, coming fully into his own, every bit as bold and stubborn as the master himself, every bit as ready to join battle for the cause beyond himself. He had hoped never to fight this battle again; he thought they had long since outgrown such things.

How wrong he was. "It would be a simple matter to free the political prisoners," Obi Wan told him. "We should act now."

"_Not_ until we have discovered the identity of the traitor," Qui Gon said sternly. "To do otherwise is to take terrible risks with the lives of all here."

"The people _will_ rally to the Duchess' cause, if they are given a strong signal," Obi Wan said, chin tilting up defiantly. "You must see this, master."

"I do not presume to know the wills of an entire race of sentients, Obi Wan, nor to predict the future. The present moment should guide our actions."

"The Force is full of it," the young Jedi insisted. He paused, as though listening. "It's like an indrawn breath. Master – I can _feel _it. " When Qui Gon did not respond, he added, "Everything is connected. This is the right moment."

Qui Gon released his breath. "You are gifted, Padawan," he said carefully. Force help him, he must not commit the grave error of overlooking his own student's insight – especially in matters which were not his own special provenance. "But you are also young. There may be a connection, a vergence in this moment. But we must remember what is real and threatening: there is a traitor among us. It would be foolish to act until we know who that man is."

Obi Wan shifted a little, a tiny graceful concession. "Possibly." But he swiftly followed up with a new attack, the hint at submission a mere feint. "Which is why I propose taking only the Guard with us."

"The royal Guard?" Qui Gon tried hard to mask his incredulity. "They obey the Duchess, and _she _at least has the wisdom to heed my counsel."

"They would follow me," the Padawan announced, confidently. _Arrogantly. _

The tall man clamped down hard on his rising anger. He had lost his temper in earnest only six times in the last decade; as to the occasion of such unbecoming outbursts, the score stood evenly divided between Yoda and Obi Wan. He perceived that the latter was making a strong effort to take the lead. With a very bitter smile, he answered the assertion with his own disarming strike. "Your charmed influence over the Duchess does not extend to her personal escort or to myself, Obi Wan."

His apprentice went white with strictly controlled outrage. Qui Gon called upon the Living Force. _Please. Peace. Let him hear me._

"We will take no further action until the identity of the traitor has been discovered," he asserted, sorely tempted to bring the persuasive power of the Force to bear – a grave abuse of his teaching authority, a subtle perversion of the bond which tied them together.

Obi Wan held his tongue – which was an impressive accomplishment. But he did not bow, or even nod. He simply let his gaze slide away, past Qui Gon to the cold stone corridor beyond.

"Do not disobey me," Qui Gon warned. _Begged. Pleaded. Not again. Not like Melida/Daan. Hear me. _

Obi Wan looked at him with the eyes of a much older man, one who knew that he was going to die soon, perhaps that day. "I will do what I must," he said quietly.

The master's heart sank within him.

* * *

><p>Qui Gon Jinn was a truly great Jedi. There were those who doubted the truth of this statement, of course. The nay-sayers called him a maverick, a rogue, even went so far as to hint that his allegiance to the Order was questionable. They cited his many acts of disobedience against the Jedi Council, his penchant for adopting lost causes and championing the unlikely and unpredictable side of conflicts, his reputation for following his own instinct and whim above the Code and the precepts. They spoke of his former Padawan's fall to the Dark side; of his vow never to teach again and his sudden rescinding of that un-Jedi-like vow in order to take an apprentice already rejected by the Council and assigned to the Agri Corps. They even looked askance at said apprentice, noticing every foible or slight misstep, and sagely hinting at the corrupting influence of an unwholesome teacher.<p>

Obi Wan had never listened to a whit of it. He had believed in Qui Gon Jinn wholly and without reservation from the first day they had met, in the face of rejection, temptation, his own destruction. Nothing could shake his loyalty, or his devotion. He respected and revered the tall Jedi master enough to commit his life and training to this man's sole authority. He did not strive merely to be Qui Gon's student; he strove to _be _Qui Gon – to be every bit the Jedi that the great man was. He did not merely do what Qui Gon told him; he did what Qui Gon himself did. He did not simply hear the man's teachings; he embodied them.

Which is why, though it made him feel ill, he had to disobey Qui Gon now.

He stood outside the Halls of Honor, his heavy sable cloak sweeping the dusty slabs of cracked marble outside its broken gates. With him were Kubrec and five others, hand chosen from among the Guard, all willing and eager volunteers. They stood, armed with their long pikes and a small blaster apiece, faces hidden behind their obscuring helmets. Their loyalty to him was firm, unyielding. Somehow, in vanquishing Besh Kevvla, he had inherited these men's allegiance; their formidable strength and skill were his to command.

It was a new experience, but he knew better than to disdain such a gift from the Force. His men leaned together in a circle, gathered round the compact holoprojector in his open palm. Above the plate a miniature rotating map of the city's byways and major sectors shimmered in the cold air. "We will each move to the rendezvous point separately, " he instructed them. "Avoid the major thoroughfares and any droids or security patrols. We will meet here." He indicated the service docking area adjacent to the heavily fortified prison.

The royal Guard murmured their understanding and saluted in the Mandalorian fashion, dispersing quickly into the city's tangled pathways, each on a different trajectory, Singly, they would attract little attention. Obi Wan waited for the last traces of his new comrades' presences to fade into the Force's currents, then set off on his own chosen course, a path which carried him across rooftops and over abyss-like canyons between them. In the upper reaches of the capitol, the protective dome curving blankly overhead, he flew toward their goal like an arrow loosed from a bow.

He could sense the moment; it had come, it was upon them. Below, all around, the city lay ready. The humming pulse of Mandalore's people had resolved from a complex tapestry into a single taut thread, a unity of heart and mind. Like kindling ready for the fire, the citizens waited for hope to set them alight. They needed only a signal, a flare to herald coming change, and they would rise as one to welcome a better regime, a new way of life. They were weary of everlasting destruction…prepared to throw off the yoke of war. Here in the capitol, elsewhere on the planet, throughout the entire system, the potential converged upon a meoment, a single point where Mandalore's long and bloody history might be turned from its deep-carved channel and set to flowing in a new direction.

This was the command of the Living Force; this was a temporal vergence. Had not Qui Gon always told him to keep his mind in the present moment, to heed the living Force above all? How long had he wondered at this and strained to understand it? And now, at last, he knew: the prompting seemed to well up from the foundation of his being, to suffuse his every fiber. There was no countermanding such an imperative. Its clarion call was so pure, so bright, so true that there could be no other choice. He was a Jedi; and a Jedi serves the will of the Force. This is what Qui Gon had taught him; and this was what he would do.

He finished his journey with a long drop onto the duracrete below, landing amidst his astonished companions with barely a thump of boots on pavement. Their posture proclaimed awe and fierce approval; they were led by a _Jedi. _When had there ever before been such an alliance? All six men were there; none had been caught in transit. Overhead, an occasional speeder flitted. The hum of roving security droids echoed off the windowless walls of the prison building.

There was a high wall here; beyond lay a small quadrangle– a yard hemmed in on all sides by hard and unyielding stone . Motion-detectors were buried at close intervals along the perimeter. Signalling his men to wait, Obi Wan launched himself to the top of the wall, landing with perfect precision between two of the automatic devices. They locked on his position simultaneously and fired, just as he vaulted away over the far side. The two security devices exploded as their shots slammed into each other. Somewhere, a claxon wailed.

The interior fo the prison yard was criss-crossed with moving laser-lines. No doubt any disturbance in the web of thin beams would trigger further blasterfire, or worse. The trap had been designed to keep any ambitious prisoners from escaping, or even venturing out of bounds; but to a Jedi, such things were child's play. Literally. Obi Wan remembered such an amusing exercise from his days as a youngling in the Temple. Leaping, rolling, sliding, he wove his way across the broad space in a dizzying display of gymnastic skill. Once safely across, he looked back on the still-moving, unbroken tangle of red beams, and smiled smugly.

Before him stood the door to the guard tower. His saber plunged straight through its heavy durasteel paneling; in seconds he had carved out the locking mechanism and thrown the portal wide open with the Force. More alarms sounded; the stamp of running boots could be heard pounding in hallways.

He reached the top of the tower in six long bounds, taking each flight of narrow stairs in one flying leap. A sentinel whirled to apprehend him, firing off one shot which ricocheted off the saber's blade and slammed into a wall. Obi Wan threw the unfortunate soldier down the stairwell, slammed open the doors to the control room at the tower's top, and activated every alarm and emergency response system he could locate. Some panels of lights and displays he could not decipher; he shrugged and carved through these consoles with his saber. Lights flashed, laser cannon blasted, the trigger system in the yard erupted into a hailfire of bright plasma; the fire retardant system went haywire; chaos erupted inside the prison. Soon guards in grey uniform, armored and helmeted, were shouting and rushing wildly to locate the source of the destruction. He heard the tramp of feet rushing up the tower's stairway.

Breathing in the Force, feeling it swell within his blood, he held out a hand, narrowed his focus upon the window overlooking the prison yard, and sent a wave of concentrated energy smashing against a single point. Hairline cracks appeared, radiating out from a central point. He rushed forward, slammed a well-placed kick into this weak spot, and watched the transparent shards scatter and fly outwards, sailing down in a shower of deadly fragments. The door behind exploded in a blaze of fury as he launched himself neatly through the jagged opening, dropping gracefully through the open air onto the roof of the prison building proper, and thence to the hard ground. The main gates were a short distance away.

Behind him, the captives were being roughly evacuated, herded out of the malfunctioning building by a handful of armed guards. In the shrill cacophony of sirens and alarms, the strobing lights and over-loaded security system, the shouting of the prisoners and their captors was barely audible; yet the Force seethed with desperate, reckless emotion. Obi Wan ran flat out to the gates, and buried his saber to the hilt in the control panel. The electromagnetc lock shorted out; he heaved the colossal gates open with the Force, crying out with the effort.

Somebody fired at his back; he whirled to deflect the shot, rolled aside from a second one, and grinned in ferocious delight as his men barreled through the gates, pikes carving wild patterns in the smoke and noise filled air. They pushed forward, carved a path into the mass of jostling, confused bodies, closed hand to hand with the prison guards. There was a great surge of understanding and wild hope in the Force, a shuddering wave of reckless and angry daring – and a full-scale riot erupted. The guards were overpowered, trampled or crushed in the torrent of people thundering through the gates. Outside, a crowd of hundreds parted and cheered as the political dissidents ran, shouting with one voice, out into freedom. The crowd rushed to meet them, swallowed them, filled the yard and poured back into the prison itself, victorious, rebellious, unfettered.

The remaining prison custodians laid down their weapons and surrendered, overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The mysterious figures who had initiated the trouble melted back into the city's shadows, content to allow the people of Mandalore to finish what they had started.

* * *

><p>The Guard, and their young leader, returned victorious that evening. The Halls of Honor marked their homecoming with a pale phosphous glow, nothing more; and yet the Force rang like a deep gong with the horror and utter astonishment of their foes, shone glorious with the rekindled hope of thousands upon thousands of people. News of the liberation spread through the ravaged capitol like light breaking over a shadowed horizon; zeal, thirst for true freedom and the cessation of warfare ran in the streets like a river let loose from some oppressive dam.<p>

Obi Wan felt drunk with it. Light swelled in his every breath, bathed his tired limbs in warmth. His heartbeats were nothing but beads strung on its infinite length. He led the way into the meeting chamber, where the Duchess and the court waited in unveiled astonishment, their surprise and gratitude and fierce, proud loyalty shuddering wildly in the Force's rising currents.

He bowed, and the Guard saluted. The Duchess stood, the folds of her gown draping over the throne's feet and the steps below.

"I am indebted to you for your bravery," she murmured softly, addressing the young Jedi directly. "All Mandalore is."

He looked up, into the cold, cold depths of her eyes, and saw not the icy disdain she had displayed earlier, but rather the cold of a celestial ocean, the pure stark cold of the heavens, where Light drowned endlessly, inviolate, between the stars. He had not been forgiven, quite – but his presence was again tolerated. It was enough.

"Mandalore shall be as free as the prisoners who escaped today," she declared. "Free of warfare. Free of violence. Free of our dark past. Almeck: I will not hesitate to act any longer. Now, while we have the hearts of all our people behind us, we must make a stand. We shall reoccupy the palace, and cast the usurpers out. There shall be peace at last."

If Almeck, or Celot, or any of the court harbored an objection, or a doubt, they kept their silence. Satine's determination swept them along in its wake, carved through any obstacle as though it did not exist. Her will, it would seem, had been forged of _beskar;_ her right to rule as indisputable as her great beauty.

The only one in the wide hall not caught up in the spell was Qui Gon Jinn..

Obi Wan caught his eye as the councilors, and members of the Mandalorian court gathered about the throne, earnest in their new deliberations, brimming with a rekindled energy and resolve. The Jedi master's grey eyes flicked toward the outer corridor, his cloak rippling darkly about him as he stormed beneath the door's broad lintel and waited just out of earshot. His apprentice appeared a moment later, the flush of easy victory quickly ebbing away in the face of the older Jedi's thunderous presence. Electrical, dangerous, the Force eddied and surged painfully between them, filling their harmony with strange discordant notes, a grating jangle of raw emotion.

Neither man spoke for some time, neither willing to take the first step toward the inevitable. Qui Gon waited for apology, for explanation, for protest, for justification. For some thread of hope that this nightmare was not unfolding before him, a gross parody of what should have been, of what _must_ be if this mission were not to end in unmitigated disaster. But Obi Wan was not one to plead or to hide behind an excuse. He, too, waited; expectant, he left Qui Gon the hard task of giving voice to the abomination that had just occurred. There was no word for the act: _disobedence, rebellion, defiance –_ all seemed insufficient to describe the enormity of it. To express the stunned, empty outrage he felt. Obi Wan had but _once_ behaved in such a manner – and that was many years ago now. They had said all that could be said about it, then. There was nothing left.

He looked at the Jedi standing before him. Did his Padawan expect a unbecoming display of emotion? Did he expect an argument which might then be turned to reconciliation? Or an opportunity to express whatever hot sentiments raged in his own mind? Did he expect Qui Gon to counsel him, to offer guidance, to succor whatever doubt and pain and longing and confusion he had brought upon himself with this act of blatant defiance? He would get no such base, unworthy satisfaction from his master.

"I have nothing to say to you," the tall man ground out, at last. He turned his back on Obi Wan and strode down the corridor, the sting of his dismissal rebounding, mysteriously, upon its originator. The Padawan did not follow; after all, they were no longer one thing but two. Teacher and student had been sundered, and Mandalore had thereby won its second devastating victory.

Qui Gon wondered: how long until the death blow fell?


	5. Chapter 5

**Before the Throne**

**Chapter Five**

_"You and the Duchess have a history."_

_"I_ _knew__ her."_

_-Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi_

* * *

><p>The following day, crowds thronged the palace. The people of Mandalore swelled together, a rising wave of indignation and new resolve, crashing against the half-blasted walls of the government's seat. In the face of the general revolt, a great many of the soldiers recruited into the insurgents' employ turned upon their masters and joined the populace, subduing their companions and throwing open the gates to admit the unruly mob. Violence broke out here and there; but in all the tumult, the leaders of the opposition were nowhere to be found. They had vanished, like mist dissolving before a rising sun.<p>

News of the revolt, and the expectant crowds waiting in the stronghold of the palace, reached the Duchess' ears early in the morning. She called the court into session, and determined to go to the palace herself, under the protection of her Guard.

Qui Gon Jinn stridently objected. "Your enemies have not truly disappeared, your ladyship. They are laying in wait, somewhere. And they have an ally here among us. To expose yourself in this fashion is extremely dangerous. I cannot guarantee your safety."

Satine's eyes flashed. "Then I relieve you of that onerous duty, Master Jinn," she half-snarled. "There _are _others to whom I may entrust the task."

Qui Gon suppressed his answering flare of temper. Since when had his emotions run so close to the surface? The Duchess had the uncommon power to expose raw nerves with a single phrase. He must be cautious. "A public uprising is not a successful revolution," he admonished her. "Until the leaders of the insurgency have been found, and defeated, there will be no true peace."

She remained unconvinced. "There will be no peace if I stay in hiding. There will soon be rioting at the palace, unless a strong show of leadership is made. I know my duty, Master Jinn. Do you know yours?"

The tall Jedi clenched his teeth. Apparently Duchess Satine Kryze of Mandalore merited inclusion in the short list of sentient beings capable of ruffling his legendary calm. In some ways, he realized with a cold and objective detachment, she was quite the match for Obi Wan. The thought made his gut twist; his control slipped another infinitesimal notch. "My duty is to promote peace on this world," he growled. "I shall remain and protect your court, Duchess, since I cannot dissuade you from this suicidal path."

She tilted her chin and raised a dismissive, supercilious eyebrow. "I am much obliged to you," she said, without the least hint of gratitude.

He swept away, seeking the sanctuary of an empty room in which to meditate. If he was to save anyone, salvage any hope for this mad world, he must regain his firm and tranquil center. For the first time in many years, he felt utterly alone.

* * *

><p>Obi Wan felt death approaching, its shadow looming over him as inevitably as the broad arching dome above. There, etched in some luminous ore, were splayed the strange constellations of this system, fancifully represented. Among them were many figures of war. He felt their eyes upon him, and he felt the Force swell with the impending moment of judgment. Soon, soon, it whispered.<p>

There is no death. There is the Force. To die is to return to the unbroken, the universal, the boundless. It is but to cast off particularity. He looked out from this moment – perhaps one of his last – with new eyes. Fear skulked at the edges of perception: forbidden real entrance, consigned to the periphery, it could only mewl and whine for attention, an outcast begging for alms. Fearless, he looked out upon the particular and saw it in a poignant clarity. This was what he would leave behind; never had it appeared more beautiful. And amid the scintillating panoply of colors, sounds, light and motion, the Duchess above all shone in exquisite detail.

Had he ever before truly seen her? She was looking at him, as he stood with the whole complement of the Guard, her blue eyes distant and speculative. A dream of peace, of harmony and renewed life, swam in their depths like the whaladons on Merrid Altus. Deeper yet, in her fathomless soul, was a pure, flawless light – a crystal like those found in Ilum's deepest caves – a gem so rare that it might refract and channel the very Force. And he, attuned to this light, to the Force, sang to its tune with a strange, melting intensity. He felt he might dissolve into ash, into nothingness, content to be consumed in its radiance.

He looked away, with difficulty. To linger any longer in those depths would be utter destruction. The unsaid dwelt there, and his death. He had a task to accomplish before he perished; before he drowned in those infinite oceans. Today the Duchess would be restored to her throne, and peace brought to her suffering world. And to accomplish such an impossible feat, she would need a Jedi by her side.

"We are ready, your ladyship," he informed her when she drew near. The Guard fell into ranks behind them. On their heels strode Besh Kevvla, sufficiently recovered from his recent injuries to rejoin his comrades. He walked in chastened silence, his presence tightly furled in on itself, inscrutable and muted. Obi Wan was grateful for the reprieve from hostility; he did not need another stress-point in this touchy affair.

They set out into a tunnel system – a rough-hewn passage well-lit by the ubiquitous phosphous beads, an emergency measure hastily engineered during the latest civil wars as a means for those in the palace to escape to the Halls of Honor in the event of a bombing. It now provided ample shelter for their egress: the Duchess would return into her own, out of hiding, through this same dark path designed as a means of escape.

They progressed in silence, the company trailing in a long line as they marched solemnly through the bowels of the city, through the underworld back into realms of light. The Guardsmen's boots echoed harshly in the stony corridor, and their high helmets cast weirdly distorted shadows as they passed beneath the pale lamps. Satine walked in the lead, head held high, her formal bearing more than compensating for her lack of finery and ritual garb. Her profile was a single eloquent line of determination, her delicate features hardened by the sheer power of will suffusing them.

"I have dreamed of this day for more than a year," she murmured, softly, so that only Obi Wan might hear. Her hand brushed against his sleeve and tightened, momentarily, around his forearm.

He did not met her eyes; and he knew that she too gazed straight ahead, to the task beyond. "It is meant to be," he assured her, softly.

He felt rather than saw her smile, the tiny fissure in her icy demeanor. "I hope so."

* * *

><p>Qui Gon felt betrayed. The Living Force, which for so many decades had haunted him, entranced him, commanded his actions, compelled his heart, and thereby opened him to countless repimands and difficulties, had turned on him when he needed it most. It slipped away, elusive and shy, out of his reach, mocking him. Mocking his attachment, the emotional investment which rendered him blind to its subtlest promptings. Had he not been so unsettled by his Padawan's distraction, by his fevered conflict of loyalties, he might have seen it earlier. Here, in the timeless center of his meditative state, he saw the moment ripening on its branch, saw the hand reaching to grasp at peace before the fruit fell and was lost. He sensed the same tilting of scales that his Padawan had before – only he saw more.<p>

He saw more because he was older, more experienced, deeper in the Force. He saw not only the turning point but the poison planted in its midst, the deadly trap. He saw the traitor strike even as the Duchess reached to pluck the fruits of her labors – saw the scales tip this way, then that. He saw death coiled inside a handful of seeds, planted in the hearts of men, and inside the Halls of Honor….he saw that two powers vied for mastery over this imbalanced, precarious moment in time, and that the contest was not yet decided.

He saw gouts of fire erupting around himself, and he saw Obi Wan fall tumbling to his destruction, into a nameless abyss. His funeral pyre was censed with haffa blossoms…

Qui Gon wrenched himself away from the vision, abruptly. Gasping, clutching at his throbbing temples, he breathed away the vertigo and the terrible fear - and the sickening headache. A deep trance should not be broken so swiftly, so carelessly. But he did not wish to see more.

He would act. Now. In the moment, without thought to the future. He had, by his silence and contempt, sent his Padawan and his friend to certain doom – but the men here in the Halls could still be saved. He ran to find Almeck and to gather the court.

* * *

><p>They were halfway to the palace when disaster struck. The ground trembled beneath them; dust loosened and cascaded down in their heads from the low ceileing. A rumbling echo shuddered up the passageway.<p>

"It is an earthquake," one of the Guard exclaimed.

"No," Kubrec corrected him. "That was an explosion. There has been a bombing."

"They have discovered us," Satine breathed. "We are betrayed."

A second explosison rocked the corridor, sending all but the Jedi sprawling against walls and floor. Obi Wan sheltered Satine with his body as fragments of rock crumbled around them, pelted them with shrapnel. Clouds of dust billowed up the long tunnel behind them. The stamp of running boots could be heard approaching, from the tunnel ahead.

Besh Kevvla wheeled about, grasped the Jedi by one shoulder. "They are coming," he hissed. "Quickly. There is an overhead escape hatch a few meters down. Take the Duchess with you. We will meet them and hold them back." His grey eyes shone with a fey light.

"This is no place to fight!" Obi Wan protested. "If they have grenades, or rockets –"

"_Protect the Duchess!_" Kevvla swept his objection away with a sharp gesture. "We know our duty. Go!"

They stood for a moment longer, staring each other down. A strange understanding, or sympathy, shuddered in the Force between them. Obi Wan nodded, once, still wondering at the raw courage of the Mandalorian captain, and pelted down the passage, Satine in tow. There was indeed a small ladder and a narrow vertical tunnel carved into the ceiling here. At its apex, he could just make out the gleam of a pressure-sealed hatch.

"Climb," he urged the Duchess, who wasted no time in ascending the narrow rungs into the tunnel above. Obi Wan followed, the Force burning around him, painfully alight with danger and betrayal and the headlong, reckless, inevitable approach of his death.

* * *

><p>The first explosion brought down the roof of the meeting chamber and collapsed most the passages adjacent to it. A good number of the court would likely have been killed, had they not already been running for their lives along a deeper passage, one of unfinished stone slanting deeply underground at an angle from the main catacombs.<p>

Some of the elders stumbled as the shock wave rocked the hard floor beneath their feet. A cascade of dust fell on their shoulders, powdered hair already white with age. Qui Gon helped those he could reach, urged the rest onward.

"It is not much further," Almeck shouted over the din. "Just down this last stretch and –"

The second explosion seemed to shake the roof over their heads; the bomb must have detonated several levels upward, in the small alcoves which had been converted to sleeping chambers. The traitor, whoever he was, had been very thorough. A foreboding crack appeared in the ceiling of the tunnel. The Force snapped with vibrant warning.

"Go!" Qui Gon belted out, his throat thick with dust. The Mandalorian court obeyed, hustling down the passage as fast as they could, while chips and fragments of rock loosened and fell upon them, while the thousands of tons of rock above slipped, ground, rumbled and shifted, promising swift death.

They came to the bunker doors – massive steel portals sealing off the modern bomb shelter from the much more ancient Halls and burial vaults. Almeck slapped his palm against the recognition panel, and waited for a response. The system was dead.

With an ominous groan, part of the tunnel behind them collapsed. A cloud of black dust and choking, powdery clouds of grit washed over them. The men coughed violently, shouting out in the near-blackness. The Force twisted, writhed – Qui Gon felt the weight of the ceiling above, as though it pressed on his own lungs. Reeling, he turned his attention to the doors. The Force was his ally – it was here, in the smothering black, undiluted, boundless. He drew it in, gathered it and directed it.

The doors inched apart with an ear-splitting shriek. The court poured through the gap, gasping in relief and terror. The roof cracked, sagged, splintered. With a groan to match the laboring earth, Qui Gon thrust his hands outward and held it in place, his vision smearing to black as the last of the court pushed through the narrow gap into relative safety.

His strength failed just as the last man slipped through; he released the ceiling, fell backwards through the doors himself, and sprawled on the bunker's cold floor. The doors slammed shut again, and the thunder of the tunnels' collapse penetrated even the bunker's massive walls.

Somebody lit a glow-lamp, revealing the sparse interior of the Mandalorian bomb shelter. Every one of the court was present and accounted for. They were entombed deep beneath the planet's surface – but they were alive.

Qui Gon released a weary breath, and let his head fall back. Thank the Force…they were alive. For now.

* * *

><p>Satine reached the pressure hatch first; Obi Wan thrust it open with the Force and leapt through, past her shoulders, over the rim of the opening, and into the too-bright light of the dome's artificial day, reaching down to haul her up in the next moment. Below, the sounds of a terrible battle hammered against the tunnel's cold walls. Here, in the shadow between two abandoned buildings, deep in the blasted-out portion of the metropolis, an eerie quiet reigned. The Force still resounded with the danger and violence below, with hostility and cunning malice.<p>

"Welcome, Jedi," a voice said.

His saber was flashing to life even as he wheeled, shoving Satine behind him. Three well-armed Mandalorian commandos stood casually at one end of the narrow alley, every one of them clad in full _beskar._ A glance upward told him that two more snipers waited on either rooftop; and a crawling sensation at the nape of his neck signalled two or three others waiting nearby, poised for action They were completely trapped.

"Right where he said you'd be," the speaker chuckled mirthlessly.

Obi Wan's saber thrummed hot in his hand. _Where he said you'd be. _Kevvla's curt command to him – his unthinking acceptance of the man's advice - his _admiration_ of Kevvla's courage…His gut twisted.

"The Duchess is coming with us," another of the warriors declared.

"I don't think so." He flourished the blade, feeling the pulse of it in his hand, the tidal surge of the Force in his blood. This then, was the moment. Seven or eight against one. A warrior's death, if he was lucky. But how to get Satine out of it alive? This was his death…not hers. It could not be hers.

He made the first move. True - a Jedi only fights in defense, but this was no time for trifling over technicalities. One sweep of the blue blade severed the pressure hatch from its hinges; the Force sent the disc spinning, lethally, at the two men blocking the far end of the alley. The remaining four fired blasters; he deflected their shots, dodged aside, all too aware that their aim was not accurate, that they were toying with him. He seized Satine and ran for the far end, his only choice. As they reached the place where the walls opened out, he was struck as though by lightning from one side; a heavily armored body slammed into him, smashing him against the ground. He blocked punches, gasping as his arms took the blows of steel-reinforced gauntlets. He summoned the Force, sent his attacker flying backward into his companion.

"Satine!" She leapt into his arms, and he jumped for the nearest sloping rooftop, the Force carrying them high on a wave of power. His boots slipped on the glassy surface, skidded a meter or so toward the edge. Another man appeared behind them, a jetpack easily bringing him level with his quarry.

The saber flashed and spun, rebounding blaster shots into the man's armor. They bounced off, hit the transparent crystalline roof, shattered it. Obi Wan grunted, seized the falling fragments with the Force, threw them in a hurricane at his foe. They clattered off the beskar like raindrops off a nerf's wooly hide. The Mandalorian rocketed forward, headfirst, slamming into the Jedi's chest. Satine was knocked from his grasp. He heard her scream as he was smashed backward through the shattering roof, shards of broken crystal lancing through his clothing, his skin. He kicked his foe off in mid-air, savagely slamming his boot into the man's head, dislodging the helmet – and hit the floor rolling.

The Mandalorian was on his feet first, and firing again. Obi Wan could barely move his weapon fast enough. His gaze swept desperately over the space; ruined furniture, the burned remains of a ceremonial stairwell littered the cracked tile underfoot. He seized the warped and slagged railing, threw it at the armored warrior, attacked in a blaze of blue light. He had a glimpse of cold blue eyes and white-gold hair before he brought his blade down in a killing blow…which did not penetrate the armor. He cried out as the Mandalorian seized his sword arm in a crushing grip and struck him in the ribs with the other fist, his armored knuckles cracking against bone. Obi Wan twisted, kicked away, threw the man against he wall, Plaster cracked and flaked away. He jumped again, back to the rooftop. Satine was sliding helplessly down its sharp slope, toward a high drop. He launched himself toward her in a flying dive, collided with her as she plunged over the edge, somersaulted in mid-air and landed on a narrow parapet.

A blaster shot disintegrated the precarious landing-place beneath his feet, and he jumped for another roof. They stumbled, found their feet, ran. Two of their hunters blasted across the gap and came pounding across the flat surface, releasing liquid cables from wrist gauntlets. The wire-thin cables twisted around the Jedi's ankles, felled him. He skidded heavily on the rough gravel, slewed round, slashed at the cords with his saber. The delay was sufficient; both warriors jumped in, firing shots. One he deflected, the other he nearly missed, It glabced off his blade and singed his shoulder, leaving a trail of searing pain. The Force exploded within him – with a visceral cry he threw them off, across the rooftop, over the edge. Satine was hauling him up now; they ran again, danger throbbing behind them, around them.

The roof ended. There was no other. He wheeled again, spun his saber to block more shots. The thrum of a speeder sounded below – another foe, waiting in ambush. He threw one arm around Satine, and leapt into open space as the speeder bike hurtled around the building's corner. His feet struck the helmeted head squarely; the rider tumbled off, he grabbed the speeder's controls, grunted as he hit the seat. Satine screamed, nearly slipped off behind him. He veered right, avoiding blasterfire, sending the Duchess sliding forward into him. Her hands clawed at his tunics, grappled wildly for purchase as he dove and sped around the tight-packed maze of buildings. At last she gripped hard against his chest. He could feel her fingers slipping against blood-drenched skin, moist cloth.

"Obi Wan!" she cried out, horrified, voice cracking with near-panic.

"I'm all right!" Left, left, down, right, up. Up again. they were pursued. Blaster fire clipped the sides of the bike, dented one of the intakes. The vehicle bucked and spluttered beneath them. Two more Mandalorians joined the chase. He looked upward. There, high in the protective dome, a tiny opening, a crack where the wars had damaged the superstructure. He aimed the bike for the gap in the mighty painted constellation and opened the throttle to full.

They streaked upward, the Mandalorians on their tail. The bike shuddered, twisted beneath him, died. They were nearly there….he turned, grabbed Satine, and pushed off the failing bike with all his strangth and the power of the Force, just as the machine reached the apex of its impetus-driven curve and began to fall. They sailed upward, through the gap, through the meters-thick scaffolding of the dome, and into the planet's dull skies.

The dome was a miniture world, a half-sphere set into the harsh desert below; its horizon curved away on all sides, smooth and unbroken. They slipped, hands grabbing at nothing, and began the inexorable slide down, down, to the distant rocks below. Satine grasped at his ankles as she slipped past; Obi Wan fumbled for his own cable, found that he had none. It had been lost on Merrid Altus and never replaced. They fell, gaining speed, the dome's smooth surface rolling away beneath them faster and faster, the wild, barren landscape spreading out below them as they looked down in horror from an immense height.

He twisted again, sprawled belly first upon the dome, and plunged his saber straight into the thick shielding. Sparks sheared off, danced in the air, buried themselves in his hands, his hair, his tunics, where they smouldered and burrowed deep. A deep, wailing shriek of fusing metal rose into the sky; and their descent slowed. The blade carved a slow gouge into the dome, a molten trail of red and orange smeared behind them like a furious comet-tail.. Obi Wan held on, the heat and the strain in shoulders and arms threatening to loosen his grip on the hilt. Satine clung to his legs, her arms trembling with the sustained effort, as they descended slowly along the dome's majestic curve.

But death was not yet finished with them. The gap above issued forth a pair of warriors, their jetpacks carrying them over the edge and around the dome's wide circumference, until they swooped down on the helpless pair like hawkbats upon a pair of nesting thranctills.

Obi Wan saw them, snarled, wrenched the saber free. Satine and he plummeted down again, accelerating, their bodies barely touching the dome's surface as they fell over the ever-curving edge. The Mandalorians dove for him, firing bolts; he blocked, parried, defended himself and the Duchess in a blur of light. One warrior charged straight for him, collided with him, sent him rolling sideways along the dome's slippery horizon. They grappled, writhed, twisted together. The saber wavered dangerously close. The Mandalorian unholstered his blaster; a kick sent it spiralling out into the dizzying wind. He slammed a fist into the Jedi's jaw, into his unprotected side, into his gut. The saber flashed – and the helmet parted from the torso, and spun away into the clear blue while the body tumbled helplessly over the edge.

Obi Wan reached through the Force, pulled Satine back to him, and slipped toward death, her arms wrapped tight about him. The bottom drew near, nearer. He tried to bury the saber in the dome again, but his strength was ebbing, his vision blearing. The second warrior blasted toward him, fury etched in every harsh line of his _beskar._ The ground approached…faster, faster… Obi Wan seized the last scraps of his strength, the tattered remnants the Force, and pulled the man toward them, headfirst, without restraint. The warrior flailed, yelled, hit the dome with a rending crash, crumpled. Satine's scream of horror was whipped away in the wind. The jetpack smashed against the dome, bounced, hit again - and exploded.

Destruction filled the air, shook it, flung them loose and sent them flying into oblivion. Obi Wan felt the ripple of fire, of devastating power, and sailed within it, the Force wrapped around him, inside him, below him. He fell, and he did not fall. He held Satine tight and released himself into the Force, into the Light, into death. They hit the ground, in a haze of golden radiance, and rolled over and over, harsh stones scraping beneath them, dust and a hail of fragments showering down on them, silence rushing to fill the void left by the impossible, raging inferno.

* * *

><p>They were alive.<p>

Had the Force retracted its judgment? Had the sentence been suspended and a full pardon granted? Was he not supposed to be dead, his life spilled out here on Mandalore's harsh altar? There was a roaring silence, as though time itself been burned out in the explosion, and with it sound and sensation and rational thought. His ears rang with pain, the shock wave's last parting kiss, and he felt hot blood trickle along one side of his neck. Possibly a ruptured eardrum. He didn't care.

They were alive. All rules, all purposes, all laws of cause and effect, all pasts and futures seemed suspended in the glorious impossibility of this one fact. It was a miracle of the Force, a shocking reversal of destiny. Dizziness and elation strove for mastery.

Satine stirred beneath him, and he carefully shifted his weight, pulling her closer in a grateful embrace. Not only he, but she too had been spared. Her hair was loose, silver-gold silk brushing against his face, where he pressed close. She coughed, and stirred some more, tilting her face upward, limp in his arms. For a moment they lay, stunned and speechless.

They were alive. And something more. All masks and deceptions, armor and fervent denial had been burned away in the inferno as well. The unsaid welled up from the primordial silence of their shared awe, and added its own quiet spell to the enchantment. Satine's fingers slowly traced over his neck, wiping away the blood. They came away red, and she frowned, the exquisite thin lines of her brows quirking into a lovely flourish of concern. Her eyes had thawed, somehow; the icy depths offered only solace and welcome.

Somewhere, beyond the borders of the silent moment, a drum-beat of warning pulsed. A thin, faint throbbing in the Force. Her eyes…

"Satine," he murmured.

She cradled his face in her hands. A hot wind blew a strand of silver-gold hair across his cheek. It smelled of dust, and haffa blossoms, and sweat, and incense. The unsaid whispered in the breeze, fanned over their skin, rippled at their torn and singed clothing, clawed at bruises and burns, lacing the inexpressible with a strange pain.

The pulse of danger drew nearer, vibrant as the hot wind, insistent as the limpid pools of her eyes.

"My lady..."

She melted further, the thaw spreading from eyes to limbs. She pressed closer into him, until there was no space between them. The silent moment filled and overflowed with the thawing ice, the unspeakable pouring over its rim like a fountain, flooding over parched land. His senses unfurled, spun apart. The Force. Satine. Danger, pounding behind his temples. Her eyes, her skin, her scent, pounding in his veins. There was no difference. Danger; Satine; the unspoken; his death. All were one.

A Jedi does not know fear. There is no fear. He leaned closer, and closer still, until they were one thing. The hot wind shuddered over them; they were still one thing. She tasted of sweet spices and the pure snow of Ilum and the burn of his saber and the rush of Light as he fell into her deepening embrace. The ground trembled slightly beneath them, the Force trembled, and they trembled within it, one thing. They pulled apart, as far apart as one heartbeat and the next, drawing in a single, reverent breath –

- And the harsh clack of ten blaster rifles ruptured the sacred, silent moment. Danger flared, hot and real, distinct and armored in Mandolarian steel around them. Their captors stood ringed about in an unforgiving circle, weapons leveled and helmeted faces seeming to leer with ironic delight.

They were alive – and yet girded round with death.


	6. Chapter 6

**Before the Throne**

**Chapter 6**

"_This may not be the time to ask - but were you and the Duchess ever…?"_

"_I fail to see what relevance that has to the situation at hand!"_

_-Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi_

* * *

><p>Obi Wan released a breath of bitter laughter and pulled against his bonds again. Of course there was almost no point in this exercise; he had attempted to break the hard metallic bands with brute strength and the Force's gentle persuasion at least a dozen times, to no avail. But simply <em>waiting<em> here – presumably for his execution – seemed a pathetic waste of what little time he had left.

Besides, he was quite _uncomfortable._ Hands wrenched up high over his head, ankles firmly secured to some grill or grating in the floor, he judged that the arrangement had been hastily contrived for a man at least a hand's-span taller than he. The cell, such as it was, appeared to be a basement or warehouse level belonging to some much larger building. He knew the general layout of their new location; although their captors had blindfolded him during the lengthy transit, the Force had softly depicted to him the form of a ruined protective dome, and the dilapidated ghost town which huddled beneath its fragmented shell. It was a much smaller city than the capitol; and here in its center the insurgents had established a makeshift base, a hideout and a fortress against their enemies. In the face of the people's uprising, they had fled here to regroup and plan their next attack. The bombing of the Halls and the assault on the Duchess and her Guard had been the first strike in the new plan of attack; the Force shimmered hot with their desire to press their advantage, regain their hold over the main city and thereby the system.

This was a fine mess. Satine was also a captive in this same building. He could feel her tightly controlled panic, like a shiv thrust between his ribs. He had tried to block it out, but his every effort to escape the sickening awareness of _her_ fear was confounded. Her fear was his fear; his fear was hers to command, to summon into existence. It was a novelty to him – and not a pleasant one. He gritted his teeth, resenting the vulnerability, the strange sensation of a foreign power playing havoc with his heart and mind. _Attachment leads to the fear of loss…_

What if they killed her? What if they hurt her first? What if Kevvla, that traitorous Force-forsaken son of a scabrous akk, had his way with her? With a furious snarl, he thrashed against the bonds again, managing only to draw blood from the already chafed skin around his wrists. He froze, his heart hammering against his ribs in horror. _Fear leads to anger…_ How steep and treacherous that slope was. He must not allow himself such thoughts again. _Anger leads to hatred, hatred leads to suffering. Beware the Dark side, Jedi._

What was he _doing?_ He knew better than this. He had been a prisoner before. He had waited for his own execution before – more than once. It was a sort of hobby, really. He had been in similar situations, with other lives dependent on him. He could almost hear Qui Gon Jinn's voice, soothing his thirteen-year-old self with a hand on the shoulder and a few calming words. _Do not fret, Padawan. A solution will present itself. The Force is our ally._

But the memory of Qui Gon brought a flood of fresh pain. Was Qui Gon alive? The bombing had targeted the Halls of Honor. With a choking cry, he realized that his last exchange with his master had been one of anger and resentment. They had parted on the most strained of terms, a world apart, their harmony broken. It was not the ending he would have chosen. Indeed, now, drinking the acrid, stinging dregs of the cup fate had given him, he felt immense shame at having ignored the tall man's warnings. There had been a traitor. His actions had been premature….and yet he had been so sure that the Force spoke to him, that the moment was right. The raw and painful truth was this: he still had much to learn.

"Master," he sighed, regret mingling with the ever-present throb of Satine's fear, in a potent and paralyzing blend of unwelcome emotion.

He had to get out of here.

* * *

><p>Qui Gon Jinn knelt, in a corner of the subterranean bunker, calling upon the living Force for insight, for strength and calm. The members of the Mandalorian court sat hunched, despondent, all around him. They were dispirited by the bombing, by the stark evidence of treason in their ranks. Suspicion tainted their thoughts, cast a pall of silence over the bedraggled gathering. Which one among them was the traitor, the would-be killer?<p>

The Force ebbed and flowed, a vast ocean in which this stifling, hard-walled room was nothing but a tiny bubble, a single speck of froth on an immense sea of waves. Their troubles were nothing, insignificant, in comparison to the Force's depth and ageless power. If they were meant to live, they would. Qui Gon felt no fear regarding the outcome. But he did feel something else – a distinct flash of unrest, of distress, appearing and reappearing in the solemn depths like some fleet creature diving in the murky waters below. It was…familiar.

Accepting the invitation, he sank deeper, beneath the waves, to a realm where distances no longer mattered, seeking that elusive presence. To his inward eye, a ruptured dome appeared, outlined against a line of jagged hills. Mandalore's dull sky stretched overhead. Within the city, a ruined building, crumbling to rubble. Within the building, a darkened room…empty, spacious. Within the room, hurting and tightly shackled, his Padawan.

A breath of remorse, of sorrow, fluttered against Qui Gon's mind. His heart twisted – his last words to Obi Wan had been condemning, curt. It was not the ending he ever would have chosen. And yet he had chosen it. He nudged at the young Jedi's mind, surprised and relieved that the Force had granted them this moment of connection. He felt a wavering response, a faint beam of light questing against his own thoughts, tentative and stained with an unwonted anxiety.

_Oh, Padawan,_ he sighed, invisibly, within the Force's depths.

There was a tiny spark of acknowledgement, and of regret. _My fault._

The moment dissolved, the image spinning out into unarticulated wholeness again, and Qui Gon found himself once again in the dimly lit confines of the bomb shelter, buried beneath countless tons of rock. The court still sat despairing around him, their hard faces fixed in expressions of resignation and bitterness. He had to find a way out of here.

* * *

><p>"I hope you are comfortable, my lady."<p>

Satine Kryze wheeled about, to face the intruder. Besh Kevvla stood in the tiny room's doorframe, his helmet tucked neatly beneath one arm, his uniform of the Guard exchanged for the traditional _beskar._ His grey eyes traveled over her in a predatory fashion, coming to rest upon the hollow of her throat, where her pulse swelled visibly, frantic with fear and outrage.

"You are the most beautiful thing our world has ever produced," Kevvla remarked, stepping into the confines of the cell and allowing the door to hiss shut behind him. He set his helmet down upon the inset shelf, the only furnishing besides a narrow cot set in the opposite wall.

"And you are the most vile and repulsive worm our people have ever produced," she retorted, stepping back as he advanced, smiling coldly, his eyes never leaving her throat, the place where her white skin stretched delicately above a high collarbone.

Kevvla merely chuckled. "Such fire and spirit," he purred. "You are a true Mandalorian, my lady. I wonder why you would keep company with a low-born whelp like Kenobi?"

She twisted her back toward him, but one gauntleted fist seized her arm and slewed her back around, holding her in place with a painful pressure. He bored into her eyes, not caring that they watered with pain.

"What have you done with him?" she demanded, regretting the question, the revelation of her weakness. But Kevvla knew already…what did it matter now?

"Nothing, yet," he said indifferently. "I am far more concerned for your welfare, Duchess. My brother – the leader of our revolution – wishes to have you executed for treason. It is only at my pleading that you have been spared this long."

"Spare yourself the trouble," Satine snarled. "I do not need your pity."

Kevvla's lips curled upward in a chilling smile. He leaned closer, puling her towards himself until his breath wafted hot against her ear. "Aurrick is a fool. With you by my side, we could overthrow him. The men are loyal to me, and will be to you. Be my consort, Satine – and the throne is restored to you."

She pushed against him, but he tightened his grip, held her fast against his hard, battle-scarred breastplate. She could see every scratch and burn upon its boldly painted surface. "I would rather die."

He shoved her away then, and she stumbled backward, collapsing upon the low cot. Kevvla loomed over her, hungrily. "That can be arranged." He stood, waiting for a response. Receiving only her disdainful silence in reply, he stepped closer and took her chin between his fingers, digging in hard. "And that is certainly what I have planned for your pet Jedi."

She scowled at him, offering only furious indignation and bottomless contempt, until he relented and left her abandoned once more to her own dark musings. But when he had disappeared form view, she sank upon the comfortless cot's mattress and wept, despairing.

* * *

><p>Governor Almeck's face was grave. He spoke in a low tone. "Yes, there is an emergency drill – this bunker was built as a precaution against aerial bombing. It was anticipated that the survivors might have to dig themselves out. But Master Jinn, it is possible the entire city is occupied."<p>

Qui Gon nodded. "It is possible," he agreed. "But I do not think so. The Force tells me that the capitol is still in chaos, but I do not sense the presence of your foes. They have retreated."

The tall Mandalorian was dubious. He ran a thoughtful hand over his bearded chin. "In the aftermath of such a victory? That is not the way of our people, Master Jinn. They will press their advantage, especially if they have killed the Duchess."

Qui Gon shifted. "Then there is nothing to be gained by waiting here," he insisted. "There may still be hope of thwarting whatever they have in mind. Whether or not the Duchess lives, your world deserves its chance at peace. That must be your role, if there is no other to take it."

Almeck considered him for a moment longer, grim approval in his eyes. "Yes," he said finally. "I will do whatever I must for Mandalore. The others will listen to me – I have some influence and respect among them."

The tall Jedi waited while the governor spoke with the remainder of the court. Time slipped by, too fast; in the Force he could feel possibilities drifting by on a swift current – flotsam in the river of destiny, opportunities which must be seized before they passed. Every moment of delay carried them past his reach forever. Since when were the leaders of this world grown so timid, so used to hiding and waiting? It was an omen – an indication of the power and terror wielded by the insurgency.

But the court did not disappoint in the end. The oldest among them, a silver haired councilor named Fel Celot, declared their resolution. "We will use the drill to free ourselves, Master Jinn. If death waits for us above, then we go to it willingly. We shall perish standing against our foes, not skulking in this hole."

Within a quarter hour, the emergency drill had been unpacked from its storage bin and set into motion. Pressure and density sensors spat out readings on the rock surrounding them. They selected a spot on the west end of the bunker, where the ground seemed most stable, and set the machine to work. Operated by primitive droid programming, it edged itself forward, grinding through the bunker's wall and then into living stone, spewing a choking cloud of dust and grit behind it. Gasping, holding cloth over their faces, the court drew back as far as possible from the widening hole. When the drill had progressed – painstakingly slowly – a few meters into the darkness, Qui Gon entered the narrow cylindrical tunnel, treading in its wake.

The machine whirred and grumbled, deafeningly, chewing through stone and compressed rubble, occasionally stalling as it hit some harder substance. As they moved forward, he once again felt the Force nudging him, urging him to turn their path aside. He adjusted the drill's controls, aiming downward, to the east. The machine grumbled, spewed out a cascade of choking dust, continued to push deep into the earth. Sloping downwards, they made slow progress; soon the power cell readings were flashing a warning. Qui Gon set his jaw. He would not forsake the Living Force…though any sane observer would have shouted at him to stop before it was too late, before the machine ran down, stranding him and the entire court beneath the city forever.

In a matter of minutes, the worst did occur; the drill thrummed to a creaking halt, the last gritty remnants of hard stone tumbling to rest beside its massive durasteel bit. The control panel dimmed and the tractors which pushed it forward screeched to a standstill. Qui Gon also stopped, drawing in a deep breath, and promptly coughing up the dust-saturated air. He was puzzled. The Force still urged him onward, its command almost frantic, a thundering pressure behind his every breath. Was he supposed to go through the wall?

With a grim twist of the mouth, he pulled the dead machine out of the way and pressed a shoulder to the place where it had gouged deeply into the red-veined mineral. He pushed – and to his utter astonishment, the stone gave way beneath his effort and collapsed, sending him tumbling over one shoulder onto the polished flagstone floor of another tunnel.

Death and danger hung in the air like the foul reek of a swamp; the echo of a battle stil rang in the Force. Qui Gon stood, reeling a little in childlike wonder and in dread at once. The Force had brought him here, as surely as it had saved his life a dozen other times…and yet, all about him, sprawled upon the harsh stone, were the bodies of the royal Guard. This then was the tunnel from the Halls to the Palace. And this was the end result of his Padawan's foolhardy attempt to escort the Duchess safely back to her people.

"Master….Jedi…" a hoarse voice croaked in the darkness.

* * *

><p>Obi Wan had just reached the conclusion that he had been left here to die of starvation or ennui – whichever killed him first – when the door hissed open at last, spilling a cold finger of white light across the threshold. A long shadow clawed its way across the luminous swath, followed by a tall silhouette clad in Mandalorian armor.<p>

The newcomer paced slowly into the darkened room and stopped just short of the prisoner. Besh Kevvla removed his helmet and leered at his Jedi captive with undisguised scorn. His eyes narrowed, and the Force tautened with malice.

"Traitor!" Obi Wan exclaimed, outrage and dread exploding within him. What had this monster done with Satine? "Where is the Duchess?"

"Safe for now," Kevvla told him, his arms folded calmly behind his back. The half-cape draped elegantly over one shoulder, partially obscuring the grotesque insignia upon his breastplate, the symbol of the Mandalorian elite. "But she is no longer your concern."

Kevvla paced in a circle, appraisingly, saying nothing for a long while. Obi Wan watched him, suppressing a shudder as the Force carried the Mandalorian's simmering hatred on a cresting wave.

"What do you want, Kevvla? You won't get any help from me."

But the platinum-headed warrior smiled at his assertion. He stopped his pacing. "Oh, I think you would do anything I asked, Jedi. I think you would grovel before me like a slave if I commanded it."

"Then you suffer under a delusion," Obi Wan scoffed.

Kevvla smirked. "Really? What if decided to kill the Duchess unless you complied with my wishes, hm?"

Eviscerating fear clawed at his innards. Would he grovel? He didn't want to know the answer. His insides were groveling already, his unruly heart begging, pleading, suing for leniency. But he was a Jedi, and well trained. His will held fast. "You would kill her anyway," he answered, steadily. "You cannot manipulate me."

Kevvla's mouth formed a hard, unremitting line. "True. Her fate is not in your hands. Indeed, your own fate is not in your hands. I presume you are intelligent enough to realize you will die."

The young Jedi managed a half-sneer. "Well, you're certainly taking your time about it. The wait is growing quite tedious."

The Mandalorian's temper snapped. "We have unfinished business first, Kenobi. I _told_ you not to touch the Duchess again."

Obi Wan had to admit that this was problematic. He regarded Kevvla with renewed fury.

"You killed two of my men," Kevvla continued. "Impressive. That makes you a warrior. If you were native-bred, I would be obliged to fight you hand-to-hand in an honor duel. But thankfully I need not waste energy on such a contest. We have a different custom for disciplining wayward servants and dogs."

"You bore them to death with dramatic speeches?"

Kevvla slammed an armored fist into his gut, effectively silencing him. "I would have your sharp tongue cut out of your head, if I did not wish to hear you scream for mercy," the Mandalorian snarled. "Show respect to your superiors."

Diaphragm still spasmed tight, Obi Wan was unable to make a decent reply. He forced a breath into his lungs and grunted out his displeasure and contempt for the Mandalorian's haughty words. Kevvla's face twisted, and he withdrew an electro-whip from his belt. He hefted the implement in his hand, eyes glittering.

"She is not yours, and never was, and never will be, you gretching Jedi scum." He drew the whip backward, its razor-thin coils sizzling faintly against the floor.

Obi Wan tensed, pulling against the unyielding bonds, and braced himself for the inevitable. Was _this_ to be his death? Looking into Kevvla's hate-glazed eyes, he saw that it might very well be. The Mandalorian's thin lips curved into a feral grin of satisfaction, anticipation of the savage punishment to come. As a warrior of the ancient Mando'a tradition, he knew his sacred duty.

He showed no mercy to his foe.

* * *

><p>"Master…Jinn."<p>

It was the man called Kubrec. Qui Gon found him, propped him against the cold wall, where he sat taking painful shuddering breaths. Blood already trickled from his ears, his nose, the corners of his mouth.

"What happened?" Qui Gon asked, wrapping the Force about the dying man's mind, trying to ease some of the pain.

Kubrec slumped against the wall, gasping. "Ah….Kevvla," he groaned. "Traitor. Trap. The Duchess…." He sighed and coughed up more red liquid. Qui Gon held his face.

"Kubrec," he said softly. "Where is Kevvla now? The others? Are they in the city?"

The Guradsman shook his head , a tiny motion. "No. Retreat to Belsaac, he said. Blow up….city….danger ….tell Duchess…"

"Kubrec," Qui Gon prompted him. "Tell me."

But Kubrec spoke no more. Qui Gon laid the body down, and closed the sightless grey eyes. He looked up and down the corridor, where the ghostly phosphus beads illumined a grisly battlefield. Among the fallen were two in _beskar._ The rest were all loyal to the throne…loyal unto death. There was no time to honor them properly now. His thoughts raced. The insurgency had fled the city, to a place called Belsaac. He did not recognize the name. Why would they depart – as Almeck had pointed out, they had the advantage. And what had Kubrec's final warning meant?

He sank to his knees. The Force would guide him, again. It would have to. He opened himself to its bright presence, reached through its radiance for an answer. An image of the capitol swam before his inner eye – the protective dome cracked, the citadel beneath it crumbling, collapsing into a widening pit, spouts of fire erupting below and around, as though the hells had opened up to swallow the city whole. Alarmed, he pulled away- but the Force, it seemed, had more to show him. The image of destruction faded to a sightless dark, in which vibrant crimson pain flashed like sudden lightning, an endless storm of wrath. He felt Obi Wan clearly – felt the young Jedi writhing beneath the merciless onslaught, felt his silent call for aid.

But the entire capitol, and all those who dwelt therein, were in Qui Gon's hands. He had a sacred duty to defend and protect the innocent. He held onto his Padawan's presence a moment longer.

_I cannot help you,_ he sighed, invisibly, within the Force.

There was a pause, and then a soundless reply, a clear farewell. _I'm sorry, master._

Qui Gon suppressed a cry of sorrow and hurried up the tunnel, toward the palace. The city was in grave peril. He would do his duty, whatever the cost.


	7. Chapter 7

**Before the Throne**

**Chapter 7**

_"Well, I suppose we're even now….I saved your life, you saved mine."_

_"Yes, but mine was the more daring rescue of the two."_

_-Satine Kryze and Obi Wan Kenobi_

* * *

><p>Satine lay curled in a ball, her limbs weighted with misery. The cell had grown chill, but she barely noticed. To have come this far….to be within reach of victory, of peace…and to fall so precipitously into an abyss, a trap laid by those she thought were trustworthy: it was too cruel. Her year of exile had been in vain; she would as well have died in the first wave of civil war, have fallen to the first mercenary sent to kill her. Why had the Jedi suffered so much on her account if their labors were to end thus, in ignominious defeat? Why had fate ever brought them into her life at all? Why had it ever brought <em>him<em> into her life?

The door opened, and Besh Kevvla once more stood over her. She did not open her eyes. Vile, murdering slime. He was beneath her notice.

But he was also a man accustomed to having his way. He yanked her upright, hands crushing her arms as he twisted her into a sitting position, smiling coldly at her sharp intake of breath, her furious scowl. "Wake up, my lady," he said. "There is an important function which you must attend."

She stumbled to her feet, helpless in his iron grip. "What do you mean?" she demanded, attempting to regain her dignity.

Kevvla's grey eyes burned with pleasure. "A funeral," he announced. "A Jedi funeral."

Her knees gave way, but Kevvla held her against himself, his breath hot on her face. "Are you familiar with their customs? They preserve an ancient and somewhat barbaric practice – but I thought it would be respectful to observe their ways. I've had my men build a pyre in the courtyard. I know you will wish to be a witness."

He was dead. It was impossible, and yet Kevvla's cold, cold eyes held an unflinching hatred. Envy. Maddened bloodlust. _He_ was dead – and therefore she was dead, a mere husk of a woman, bones and blood and thoughts a hollow echo of life, a puppet which would totter forward a few more paces before it fell to dust and was blown away on the hot wind. Dead, unseeing, she straightened. There was nothing more to lose. She regarded the demonic man before her with the absolute contempt of the deceased for the living. Kevvla was nothing, less than nothing.

"Unhand me," she snarled. "I will come." She could do that much for _him_ before she crumbled into nothingness. He would have done the same for her.

Kevvla's smile was a thin knife, twisting in an open wound. She walked beside him, her pace steady, her face impassive, her heart utterly destroyed, already reduced to ephemeral ashes.

* * *

><p>It took hours to evacuate the court from the bomb shelter beneath the Halls of Honor. When all the councilors and elders had at last been rescued, and guided through the makeshift tunnel, they opted to return to the palace, where crowds still swelled and clamored. The recent bombings had thrown the already dispirited city into greater confusion. Fear and hope mingled uneasily, two dangerous emotions tainting the Force with volatile sparks of heat and light. A riot might break out at any moment; Mandalore had lived with war and destruction for too long. Its people knew little else.<p>

The Jedi master led the way forward, to the grand entrance. Here the gathered people parted, unconsciously, allowing the grim figure and his retinue of Mandalorian nobles to pass. Whispers and murmurs grew to a steady rumble, and then to shouting. By the time Almeck, Ceot, and the others had attained the top of the ceremonial stairwell, the crowd was moving again, calling for news, for blood.

"People of Mandalore!" Almeck called out. His voice was deep and commanding. "Peace! Hear me!"

The shouting and jostling died down; a heavy expectancy settled over the gathered citizenry. Grave faces strained to hear what the governor might say.

"Our struggle is not yet over," Almeck cried out. "The enemies of Mandalore – the tyrants who ruled here but yesterday – have fled. We are free of their terror. But we must have peace. We are a constitutional monarchy. Let us abide by our laws- the laws we chose for ourselves."

A voice called out from the back of the assembly, carried clear on the cresting silence. "What of the Duchess Satine? Is she dead?"

Almeck faltered and looked to Qui Gon for a moment. The Jedi shook his head, once.

"It matters not," Almeck responded, boldly. "The Duchess wished for peace. Let us fulfill her dying wish. The court will gather and elect a new ruler from our ranks, and the ranks of the old families. Order must be restored. The war must end."

There was a cheer and a new outbreak of shouting and jumbled speech. The court made it into the stronghold of the palace safely, leaving the seething and unruly crowd outside.

"There is much to be done," Almeck sighed. "I do not know who among us can shoulder this burden. Mandalore must be rebuilt form the ground up."

Qui Gon nodded solemnly. "First, governor, we must face the threat that still exists. I sense that we are all in grave danger yet."

Almeck held his gaze steadily. "Come," he said quietly. "We must make ready."

* * *

><p>In the courtyard, half-shadowed by the ragged edge of the broken dome overhead, Kevvla's men had indeed built a tall funeral pyre- a flat rectangle of stone surrounded, piled, seemingly upheld, by dead boughs and fragments of wood. Where in all of barren Mandalore they had collected so much dry kindling, Satine could not imagine. Perhaps this settlement had once sheltered an agricultural concern, and they had plundered the withering corpses of its orchards.<p>

Kevvla stood beside her, one commanding hand still gripping her arm. They occupied a small balcony, a few stories above the bare expanse of duracrete below. From this vantage point they enjoyed a fine view of the proceedings. Against her will, Satine's eyes lingered on the pyre, as though she were herself laid out upon it, lifeless and cold. If only it were so, and not thus: hers was the worse part. To have perished would have been far kinder.

As though reading her thoughts, Kevvla tightened his grip and whispered in her ear. "Look well, my lady. You are next to enjoy this honor….unless you wish to reconsider my offer."

"I will never yield, you contemptible traitor."

"We shall see," he growled. There was a stirring in the shadows of the courtyard opposite. "Here they come." He nodded in the direction of the motion, at the ranks of warriors emerging from the arched opening below. Two men bearing flame-throwers came first, and then two more, marching stiffly behind. Then, out of the shadows, another pair appeared, dragging a limp and bloodied form between them.

Satine gasped, clutched at the railing. Kevvla sneered, darkly amused. The beaten figure raised its head, looking straight across the wide space into the balcony, and then turned toward the pyre heaped in the courtyard's center.

"Obi Wan!" Satine struggled wildly against Kevvla, her dull mind suddenly, painfully revived, her hollowed and empty soul abruptly set into blazing life once again. _He_ was not dead; and so, neither was she. And then realization dawned, more awful than the first, devastating falsehood. Kevvla meant to go through with the so-called funeral. He had planned this from the start. "You _cannot!"_ she screamed at him, her barely- healed heart shattering anew. "No! This is unspeakable evil! You must not!"

But Kevvla 's eyes were without mercy. He raised a hand in signal, and the guards continued dragging their prisoner forward, ascending the piled branches and tinder, dropping the captive heavily upon the slab at the top. He struggled to rise, pushing up on weary arms, but one of the Mandalorians kicked him hard in the ribs, and he sprawled backward again, supine. The fire-starters stood at attention, ready to drench the fuel-soaked wood with spouts of flame.

"No…" Satine's breath fled. Her heart clamored for release from its cage. No. No. She could not watch this. How could this be happening? She turned to Kevvla, ready to beg, to drop upon her knees, to yield whatever he wished. Behind his eyes was the soulless, howling maw of war without beginning or end, of limitless hatred. He looked down greedily upon her, pushing his cape aside with an elegant gesture.

At his belt hung a lightsaber, trophy of this, his grisly victory.

Below, the armored guards were busily securing the prisoner's legs, each ankle shackled to the slab of stone. There was a tussle, as the Jedi fought off their attempts to similarly bind his arms. One man went flying off the heap, scattering wood as he tumbled down the incline. The other sailed through the air, landing on the cracked pavement with a groan and a cry of pain.

Satine pressed close to Kevvla, pleading. He started in surprise, in pleasure, in victory.

"Besh," she moaned, one hand on his face, the other sliding down his breatsplate…lower…lower…

He gripped her about the waist. His hand crawled along her body, possessive, lusting. "I knew you would come to me in the end," he murmured. His touch burned.

Her hand reached the saber hilt; her fingers closed about it.

She raised her lips to his ear. "I will never yield to you," she hissed– yanking the 'saber free, twisting her body to one side, sending the weapon spiralling out in to space, across the courtyard, in a gleaming arc.

Besh Kevvla stood frozen for a moment, watching the weapon begin to fall, change direction slightly, fly in a too-straight line into the outstretched hand of the Jedi below. The guards leapt into action, and Kevvla turned upon the Duchess with the fury of his whole race. "You damnable, filthy little _harlot!"_ he snarled, lifting her off the floor, above his head. She kicked and writhed, but he stepped forward with a howl of rage and sent her plummeting over the edge, to her death.

* * *

><p>"The warning was clear," Qui Gon told the court. "He mentioned a place called Belsaac. Does this name mean anything to you?"<p>

The elder named Celot spoke. "Alas, yes," he replied. "Though many have forgotten it. Before the civil wars which reduced us to the condition you see, Master Jedi, our world was a center of trade, of culture. Our engineers especially were renowned, though we have always guarded our secrets carefully."

Qui Gon nodded. This much he knew already.

"Below the surface of the planet are rich stores of natural fuel. Themane, and other substances. They exist in subterranean pockets, both liquid and gaseous depoits under pressure. Naturally one of our engineering masterpieces was the development of mining equipment to extract these resources. Some of the outlying towns were erected solely as mining operations. You can see the remnants of protective domes on the horizon if you use macrobinoculars. They are scattered throughout this continent particulary. Belsaac was one of these."

"Is it still in operation?" the Jedi asked.

Celot laughed grimly. "No, indeed. During the first air strikes, mining centers were targeted. The disruption of fuel supplies was a strategic key. Aerial bombardment often resulted in a fissure – the pressurized fuel deposits exploded, usually taking the whole town with them. Belsaac was lucky. Since its supply had been nearly exhausted already, the damage was minimal. Only three fourths the population was lost. Half the dome survived, and some of the buildings. But it has been abandoned to the elements for many long years."

Qui Gon frowned over this news. "I do not think it is truly abandoned," he mused. "If Kubrec heard rightly, the insurgents are using Belsaac as a base. What I do not understand is why they would withdraw to their fortress when they have the upper hand here. It makes no sense."

"Be assured there is a reason," Almeck sighed. "No Mandalorian surrenders or withdraws unless he is dead."

The Force did not hold any ready answers; all it whispered to Qui Gon's inner ear was that danger was already upon them, insidious and inevitable. His flesh crawled.

A messenger entered the private chamber – a youth from one of the ruling houses, a boy no more than fourteen. His pale face was an unnatural white. "My lords," he addressed the court. "A communication from Aurrick Tor, their leader. He has sent a holo to the court. Here it is."

The boy held out a slightly trembling hand, on which rested a projector plate. The blue image sputtered and resolved into the faceless figure of a Mandalorian elite warrior, clad in full traditional armor. A half cape draped over his right side.

"Leaders of the usurpation," this man said, his gravelly voice ringing off the chamber's high ceiling. "I give you one planetary rotation to surrender completely. If you do not comply, the entire capitol will be destroyed, with all those who dwell therein. DO not doubt my words- I have never yet failed to deliver a promise to a foe. The Jedi and all the members of the court will present themselves unarmed at the west entrance to the city. My men will be waiting. If you do not show, or if any of you offers resistance, then I bid you farewell. May the nine hells consume your dishonored souls forever."

A stunned silence followed in the wake of this deathly pronouncement. Qui Gon's hand tightened around his saber hilt. _Force help us all,_ he thought.

* * *

><p>The lightsaber landed in his palm, and his fingers closed hard about it. No longer desperate, no longer aching, no longer <em>defeated,<em> he felt the Force surge through him like liquid fire, pure and bright. The blade leapt into life, and he leapt with it. Hands reached for him; the saber flashed. A blaster shot careened toward his heart; it shattered on the burning blue blade, a spatter of red. Two downward strokes; the chains around his ankles fell away. He soared upward as twin streams of fire jetted from the flame-throwers. He reached through the Force, the roaring, blazing sea of light, and found Satine, hurtled toward her, collided with her in mid-air, snatched her from death, landed skidding on the hard tiles of the courtyard.

He was _burning_ without pain. He had no strength of his own at all – this was nothing but borrowed luminosity. Perhaps he was dead, after all, and now existed only as an empty vessel of the living Force; surely there was no Obi Wan left, only this endless rush of light. His saber moved, without his will, without his thought. He didn't even count the number of foes, see their armor, their weapons, their running feet. Satine clung to him, a vine curled about its tree, a bird held aloft on the wind, a star pendant in its celestial orb. Half-drunk on his own exhaustion, on the limitless strength flooding through him without control, without moderation, he fought with a calm ferocity he had not thought possible, with total abandon, with no restraint. He knew this to be dangerous- and yet he felt no fear, no hesitation.

A hailfire of blaster bolts descended upon them – he batted them away, saber moving in one unbroken blur of speed. Pavement cracked; portions of the far wall splintered and fell; stone and grit erupted in clouds of dust and falling shrapnel. The air was heated with plasma, rang with the hum of his blade. He looked up, spotted the balcony and Kevvla, felt death closing in below. The flame throwers approached, ready to spout sweeping tongues of fire. He seized Satine and jumped.

Even as he cleared the railing, Kevvla was moving to intercept him. Something hard struck him in the ribs; Satine was knocked out of his grip; he fell sprawling on the balcony's floor. He rolled as Kevvla's foot swept toward his head. A Force-push slammed the Mandalorian into the railing. A blaster bolt pinged off the blade's edge at point blank range, tracing a searing burn across the outside of his thigh. He swept up, attacked, cut the weapon in half. Kevvla's armor stopped the blow, catching the powerful strike on a curved shoulder-plate. Kevvla staggered under the force of the blow, but struck his foe in the knee, sending him backward with a cry. He unsheathed a throwing shiv, fingered its narrow hilt. Obi Wan scrabbled for Satine, hauled her upright, ducked as the knife whizzed past his ear. His blade came down again, driving Kevvla back, screeching hideously against he scarred _beskar _breatsplate. Kevvla stumbled back one pace, hissed, twisted about.

"Run!" Obi Wan gasped at Satine, and they pelted through the interior door, into a wide hall surrounded by arched windows. Kevvla came flying after them, rage and spite leering at them, emblazoned on his armor, in the face of the ravenous skeletal beast painted thereon. The Force roared and surged – a window shattered into fragments, exploding into the air in a hurricane of power. Obi Wan dived through the opening, Satine still wrapped tight around him. They fell, turned over once, landed on a sloping surface, slid downward. A skylight approached; his saber spun and flashed, the panes splintered, and they dropped through, jagged shards biting into his arms as he flew past the opening.

Kevvla's footsteps echoed harshly on the roof above. They spun around, panting. Here, lined in neat rows, were small craft – scoops, speeder bikes, freight carriers, ships of elegant design. Obi Wan pushed Satine toward the nearest one, leapt into the seat. A speeder bike - Mandalorian designed. Fast, maneuverable, powerful, versatile. He grinned.

"Obi Wan!"

Kevvla dropped through the broken skylight behind them, snarling. The young Jedi wasted no time. He jammed the ignition switch, opened the throttle, revved the drives, and lifted the bike off the ground. Kevvla dashed for a second bike. They drove toward the hangar doors, toward a solid panel of durasteel. Obi Wan summoned the Force – the ocean swelling around him, inside him- and wrenched the panels open a scant meter. They sped through, the intakes scraping and spitting sparks against the edges as they shot past.

The city was a ruins – a tumbled mass of broken stone, of blasted and blackened remnants. The bike was light, responsive. It obeyed his very touch, and he obeyed the Force. They swooped, dodged, wove a maddened path through the ubiquitous destruction. The whine of a second vehicle hounded them, and soon enough streaking shafts of heat and light clipped past them, narrowly missing them, exploding into half-crumbled walls and showering them with rubble.

"Kevvla!" Satine shouted.

Obi Wan gritted his teeth, pulled in the Force, deeper, deeper…it was in his marrow, blinding him, _consuming _him. He was going to melt into light and dissolve in radiance, utterly die. He didn't care. He welcomed it. The Force filled him, overflowed, guided his hands, his body. They dove and spun and sped, avoiding the deadly projectiles, evading the crazed Mandalorian warrior. The split hemisphere of the shattered protective dome loomed ahead. Past fear, past caution, Obi Wan pushed the bike faster and faster, wrenched it upward at the last moment. It followed the curve of the dome, streaking upward along the inside curve. Kevvla followed, his own machine no less agile. They ascended, dizzily, almost inverted, their speed keeping them pressed to the dome's cracked surface.

Kevvla drew nearer, nearer. Obi Wan stood, releasing the controls, trusting the Force. His saber blazed. Kevvla drew nearer. He was alongside them, upon them. The saber flashed, carving a long scar across one of Kevvla's intakes. An explosion, a trail of smoke; they careened downward, along the dome. Swooping back toward the ground, Kevvla leapt clear of his dying mount, tumbled through the air, hit a rooftop. The bike skittered, spun, crashed into another ruined building, erupted into flame and flying debris.

Obi Wan dropped back down, seized the shuddering controls, jerked them back around and over the gutted cityscape. A fissure in the dome lay ahead – laying on speed, he shot through it, through the massive walls and into the clear open air.

Mandalore's angry barren wilderness spread before them. Within his bones, his blood, the Force shimmered, and the last dregs of his strength fluttered into ash within its infinite blaze of light. Behind him, wrapped around him, pressed against him, was Satine. His lady. They were alive. They soared over the endless stretches of rock and dust, the hot wind scorching over faces and hands, tearing at singed clothing. Death dropped away in the distance, forgotten in the rush of freedom, of speed, of light.

For the first and last time in his life, Obi Wan loved flying.


	8. Chapter 8

**Before the Throne**

**Chapter 8**

_Had you said the word, I would have left the Jedi Order._

_-Obi Wan Kenobi, to Satine Kryze_

* * *

><p>"Do they intend an air strike? A bombing?"<p>

"Impossible. Such weapons and ships were all destroyed. Our system is impoverished, ruined. Where would they obtain such Force of arms?"

"They intend a full-scale infantry assault, then."

"But they are a handful of men! There has not been time to summon reinforcements."

Qui Gon stood silent, hearing the court's passionate debate yet paying it no heed. The Living Force would be his guide…and it told him to look deeper. Of Aurrick Tor's sincerity he had no doubt; somehow, the Mandalorian warrior had the upper hand. His confidence in an easy victory suffused the Force with a penetrating chill. The attack would not come from the air; nor yet without the city walls. Qui Gon sensed….felt in his very bones…that the danger lurked already among them.

No: below them. Had his earler vision not depicted flames spouting upward, geysers of fire erupting as though the gates of the Hells had been flung open and released? The city would be destroyed form _below…_

"Governor." He laid an urgent hand on Almeck's sleeve. The Mandalorian turned aside from the council for a moment. "Were there fuel deposits beneath this city as well?"

Almeck's high brow creased. "A long time ago, I believe. They have been empty for centuries, and a pressure release system installed. There is no danger."

The Force said otherwise. "But the caverns remain?"

Almeck studied him intently. "I can provide you a map, if you desire. The surveyors did a very thorough and accurate job. Our ancestors planned the foundations of the city carefully, to avoid subsidence."

"Please."

The court dissolved into shouting and accusations. Almeck was hard pressed to bring order to the chaotic gathering. "Peace, friends!" he pleaded. "We have yet some time to consider this threat."

"The whole city will be destroyed," Celot groaned. "I fear we have no choice but to surrender. If you truly value peace and life, you will not take such risks with so many lives at stake."

Qui Gon held up a hand. "A few hours," he said. "Give me time in which to investigate this matter."

"You gamble with our people's lives, Jedi?"

"What point is there in delaying the inevitable? We are not cowering babes who need time to steel their nerves."

"I did not say you were," the Jedi soothed them. "But there may still be hope of thwarting your enemies' designs. Will you trust me?"

A bitter murmur rose and swelled. Qui Gon waited patiently, while danger slithered beneath them, elusive and malicious, a serpent waiting to strike.

"Very well," Celot grudgingly allowed. "You have three hours, Jedi. But then we must consider surrender. And you will stand and submit with us."

He bowed. "I understand. And I promise you, I will do what is necessary to preserve your people's lives."

He followed Almeck to a higher chamber, a records room where holo-files were stored in gleaming rows. The governor's security key released the relevant file to their keeping, and Qui Gon hastily slid it into a projector.

A transparent blue grid of the city's under levels appeared, the scale and depth markings outlined in glimmering yellow. It rotated slowly, displaying the Halls of Honor, the secret tunnel systems extending beneath the palace, innumerable civic maintenance systems, sewage, power grid extensions, foundations and cellars….and beneath all these, a great labyrinth of natural caves, pockets in the bedrock which once contained lakes of themane or volatile caverns of its gaseous cousins. Mandalore was an explosive world, even in its geology.

Qui Gon breathed out his anxiety. The Force nudged him. Here, beneath the surface, in the bowels of the planet, was the key. He reached out with his instincts, imagining himself in the heart of that vast maze, buried deep beneath crushing rock. The caverns and pockets were connected; remnants of ancient mining shafts knitted the caves together in a crazed web. Millions of tons of rock sat above the empty places, the weight settled, secure.

But everything has a shatter point. Qui Gon simply hoped that he would be able to find this one in time.

* * *

><p>The barren, unchanging land fell away beneath them, the harsh texture of rock and desolate plain blurring into an endless smear of golds and reds, as the sky above deepened to indigo. Stars appeared, and the galaxy's arm trailed across the elliptic, a soft fan of silver lights buttressing the arid sky.<p>

Obi Wan felt himself droop, even his Force-given strength trickling away like water into the cracked desert below, his limbs growing leaden with exhaustion, his hands slackening around the speeder's controls. His sluggish mind could barely guess at what length of time they had been flying; whether they were headed in the right direction; whether, indeed, they were headed in any direction at all or simply floating suspended and immobile while the crazed world sped away on all sides.

Satine's arms tightened around his chest as he slumped forward. "Obi," she murmured. "Wake up."

He jolted upright at her command, and raised his drooping eyes to the horizon, now a thin line of flame raised against the night. The sun's last rays lingered upon its curve, lonely beacons of a passing day, promise of another to come. In the near distance, a shadow darker than the night loomed, blotting out the silhouettes of the dull landscape. Was it a trick of his over-tired mind, or did the shadow grow and move as he watched?

"What's that?" he asked, sharply.

She gasped. "A dust storm. We must find shelter. Quickly. Turn west. There is a line of low hills – there might be caves. I cannot think what else might serve. To be caught in the storm would be fatal. They are one of the reasons my ancestors built the protective domes for our cities."

Too exhausted to argue, he turned the speeder's nose toward the shadow of the hills, little more than a crumpled line of rock thrust out of the earth. Black waves of hard rock jutted like so many frozen waves, their peaks capped in yellow dust, their troughs thick with shadow and crumbling stone. They reached the edge of this scant shelter, skimmed along its skirts. The Force nudged at his mind, a faint chiming. Obedient, half-dazed, he followed the prompting and slowed, shifted, came to a halt behind a curving ridge. Here, where the fold of the hills bent at a wide sharp angle, a fissure opened between its spreading arms. A pit leading into the depths. Warm air gusted up from the opening.

"Here," he muttered, edging the scoop into the gap. The vehicle barely fit, but he carefully maneuvered it down the initial sloping passage and into a wider cavern, a sanctuary beneath the planet's surface. Here a crenellated ceiling hung with delicate crystals, a softly luminous tapestry of some native mineral. In the subtle light of these gleaming artificial stars, a burbling trickle of water could be seen at one end The natural hot spring welled out of the bedrock, overflowed in a small pool, and meandered its way back into the bowels of the earth along a subterranean passage. The floor of the cave was ankle deep in dust, in the soft crumbled remains of eons past. The speeder's repulsors swirled its top layer in mesmerizing patterns.

Satine slid off the scoop's seat, and knelt to rummage in the small storage compartment. "Blankets, but very few medical supplies," she sighed. "And no provisions. At least it's warm."

She stood, strode across the silent cavern to the edge of the spring, where billows of steam rose in graceful chorus to the roof. Warmth rolled off the spring in comforting waves. She spread the blankets over the soft pile fo dust which piled near the water, and returned to the bike, where the young Jedi lay slumped over the handlebars, eyes closed.

"Come," she urged him, tugging at one arm. "Come rest."

His attempt to dismount ended in a slow slide to his knees upon the dusty floor. She leaned down, thrust one shoulder beneath his, and hauled him upright. He tottered along beside her, protesting incoherently, and dropped like a stone upon the thermal blankets. Satine lowered herself beside him, sighing. The howl of the dust storm echoed outside, stark warning not to venture past the cave's threshold.

She shimmied closer; her arms went around him, softly, reassuringly, smoothing over a long scrape along one cheekbone, straightening the long braid which coiled behind his ear. The spring burbled and sang gently, soothingly; its heat suffused their wind-numbed limbs, prickled at grimy, sunburned skin.

"We're alive," she breathed.

"Mm.." His head tipped forward against her collarbone, and he slept.

She held him close, as the water played its ever-changing melody and the crystal fretted roof caressed them with ethereal light.

* * *

><p>Qui Gon descended the long vertical shaft, his boots frequently slipping on the rusted, crumling rungs of the ladder. Below him, the black pit plunged straight down, into endless darkness, into a dark every bit as infinite and lifeless as the void of space. Fresh air trickled sluggishly down toward him, but he kept his rebreather clamped firmly between his teeth anyway – at such a depth, there was no way to predict or anticipate what noxious fumes he might suddenly encounter.<p>

Down he went, carefully, yet making as much speed as he could. The ultimatum and the court's miserly allotment of three hours pushed him past the bounds of ordinary caution. He descended now into Mandalore's true underworld, to parley with death. If his skills as a negotiator proved sufficient, then the people would live. If they did not….he refused to contemplate the alternative. He kept his mind anchored securely in the moment.

He did not carry a light, but the Force whispered to him, telling him of the narrow shaft's walls, the drop below, the eventual opening into a wide cave, the connecting passages and the other magnificent chambers which waited through the centuries in abandoned glory. As he climbed, ever downwards, he felt time unfurling backwards. He had left Mandalore behind, its proud cities and its harsh war cries a distant echo. Beneath these, entombed in rock, might be fossils of an earlier age- settlements and cities before the time of the protective domes. Beneath these, he knew, lurked mysterious realms where watery things' bones were preserved, testament to a forgotten age when this desert world was once covered in oceans. And beneath these, so far down that his lungs ached and the heat washing through the stone sent rivulets of sweat trailing down his neck and back, were the caverns where danger waited, like a chained leviathan, a secret from the depths of time.

He reached the bottom of the ladder, and dropped a few meters down to a hard, uneven floor. He dared not ignite his saber, for fear the plasma blade would ignite some trailing wisp of themane. A single glow stick withdrawn from his belt sufficed – by its paltry light he could make out the harsh outline of a near wall and a high roof. Everything gleamed a dull black. Into this maw he ventured further, treading softly over the slick floor, his own labored breathing sounding strange, muffled and amplified at once by the rebreather. There was not quite enough oxygen; he should have brought better survival gear. Overhead, he spied the tiny gaps which indicated a pressure valve, a long shaft burrowing all the way to the distant surface.

His time was limited; the labyrinth nearly endless. Yet the men who came here before him were as mortal as he, as limited as he. They too had to have crossed this terrain, found what they wanted, planted their explosives, and left. And a living presence in this world of cold eternity was like a phosphus slug- it left behind a clear trail, a shimmering disturbance in the Force. Qui Gon closed his eyes, concentrating. Yes….they had been here. Their echo lingered, a pale, cunning smear across the indifference of rock and darkness.

He followed it, like a hunting akk on a scent trail. Through this cavern, on to the next, through a passage and then another. The narrow corridor opened into a wider cave.

Qui Gon looked up. Above, somewhere in the roof, was planted a bomb. He could just make out the blink of its timer, or the automatic detonation signal. Grimacing, wiping sweat out of his eyes, he squinted at the faint pulsing red light. His hand gripped his cable launcher, aimed, shot the grappling end up into the roof's jagged surface. It drove deep and stayed when he gave the line an experimental tug.

He ascended the cable, groped along the hard rock ceileing for the bomb. His fingers found the smooth surface and pried. It came away in his searching fingers, still flashing its tiny light. He slid down the length of cable again, knelt on the floor. The glow-stick cast the device in a lurid green glow. Wiping his gritty, damp palms on his tunic's hem, Qui Gon set to work, prying off the casing, studying the intricate circuitry within, noting the compressed explosives, the catalyst, the pulse trigger. Why did it always fall to his lot to deactivate these things?

He leaned closer, shaking away the thought, and set to work. The Force told him to hurry, hurry, and his slightly shaking fingers obeyed.

* * *

><p>Sometime in the fastness of night, when the howling of the storm was at its zenith, sending muffled shrieks of rage and dismay shuddering down the cave's winding entrance, when the prying sun was as far distant as possible, shrouded by the black horizon, Obi Wan woke. Satine watched his eyelids flutter, watched recognition dawn slowly in his roaming gaze. He stirred, cautiously, hissing as he shifted his weight onto his back, then elbows. "Well," he observed, dispassionately. "We're still alive."<p>

She pressed a hand against his shoulder, to keep him in place. He looked up into her face, blue eyes reflecting the points of light above, and obeyed without protest. She crawled over to the spring, gathered a bowlful of its hot water, lifted the gently sloshing basin back to their place of refuge. "I don't know if this is safe to drink."

He curled one hand around the metal container, closed his eyes. "I think it is," he said after a moment. They drank, taking turns. When the bowl was empty, she filled it again.

She loosened his tunics, pulled the sticky cloth away from the cuts and bruises. He flinched, but said nothing. The spring's water washed away the grime and the blood. She worked slowly, pressing moistened shreds of cloth over each injury, over his back, his arms, his neck, his face. He let her tend to the task in silence, watching as she efficiently cleansed away the worst traces of abuse.

A thin scratch above his temple, along the hairline, caught her attention. She bathed it, dribbled the hot water in his short hair, combed through the stiff bristle with one hand, wiping away more filth. She let the damp hair run through her fingers, slowly. Beads of moisture escaped and traced rivulets along his forehead, over one eyebrow, trickling onto his temple. She noticed a tiny scar she had never before seen; the dark birthmark freckle high on one cheek, the rebellious scruff of infant beard, the stubborn cleft in his chin. The humid air was making it hard to breathe; her lungs would barely expand, her heart hammered against her ribs. Her hands shook. For lack of air, for lack of an escape.

"Satine."

"I…." She scrambled away, on pretense of filling the basin again. The warm steam rising off the spring caressed her face, gathered in droplets on eyelashes and hair, fretted her dirty garments with thousands of glittering gems. She sucked in shallow breaths washed her hands, her own face. The dust storm howled outside, trapping them here. The cave seemed to close around her, its dazzling ceiling drawing near, until lights danced before her eyes. She remembered to exhale. The unsaid rose up, carried on the coiling steam, mirrored in the thousand gems above. It filled the cave, sung in polyphony, echoed in her pulse. Her limbs melted, grew heavy, obedient to its command.

She was the ruler of this planet. She was the Duchess of Mandalore, sovereign of a mighty people, an undefeated race, a proud line. Why then was she was so helplessly enthralled?

"Satine." Hands gently closed around hers. She felt the subtle hardening of calluses beneath soft skin. She felt a tremor run through the fingers, a counterpoint to her own trembling. The dust storm raged and screamed; here, in the unsaid, they were utterly trapped. Why did he not rescue them…just one more time? But there was no escape. Captor and captive, victory and surrender, blurred into the ever-moving mists, into the glittering confusion of the cave roof.

She turned to face him, certain now that her utter defeat was at hand, that the reckoning would be delayed no longer. His arms went around her, insistent, gentle. Their breath mingled, fluttered, set the dry kindling of desire into smoldering life. Flames leapt; golden, cold-pure, burning away all pretense, all hesitation.. Obi Wan reached up, loosed her hair's knot. Silver-gold cascaded down between them, a fountain of starfire. He pulled her close, bold and unafraid. She did not resist.

The unsaid welled up within the mountain spring, rushing to flood the cave with its immensity. There was no escape; it surged, and rose, and flowed around them. Satine floundered, and sank beneath its waves, into the interrupted embrace. As though no time had elapsed, as though they had never been captured, they plunged back into the ocean of the unspoken, into the infinite starry night of the cave roof. Entwined, trembling hands reaching as one to lift the veil from the universe's oldest mystery, they found the tilting axis of the past and future, the eternal moment between longing and regret. Two shooting stars momentarily released from the rigid constellations of duty and birthright, they fell burning through bottomless heaven.

They did not speak; for what need was there of words when they were but one thing?

* * *

><p>Qui Gon stood, his back aching, his breath coming harsh. The bomb lay dismantled at his feet. But that trail of prowling death still tugged at his mind, an ephemeral thread leading him on. There were other explosives, planted in strategic positions – their combined effect had been intended to collapse the very foundations of the city, to set off a seismic event of devastating intensity. And still the image of spouting fire would not cease haunting him. There was more danger here than anyone dreamed .<p>

He continued on his way, winding through palaces and cathedrals of stone and mineral. Time slipped between his fingers, insistent. The three hours passed, but he could not afford to care. The court would have to make its own decision. He at least could save the citizens. The web led him to four more bombs, which he retrieved and dismantled. When the last one ceased its blinking and lay destroyed in a small pile before him, he let himself slump onto hands and knees for a moment. Lack of proper air and the sweltering heat were taking their toll. And yet still the Force would not release him, discharge him from urgent duty. Not far away, in a cavern outside the dome's boundaries but still close to the perimeter, too perilously connected to this other series of vaults and caves, there slept a menace. He stumbled across the wide space and leaned against the wall, his scraped hands pressing against cold stone.

The Force reached through the wall, suffused the space beyond, showed him the peril. There, darkly coiling, seeping slowly over many patient centuries, was a vast sea of poison. Themane gas, or something akin to it, boiled angrily in the cave. Had the bombs exploded and ruptured the thin wall separting this chamber from the rest, a consuming pillar of fire might have welled up through the vent shafts, mixed with the shockwave in a hellish marriage of earthquake and inferno.

Qui Gon backed away. There was nothing he could do now – he was no match for the forces of nature. If Mandalore pulled through this crisis, the cavern could be tapped and the gas mined out safely. Shuddering with the awareness of a disaster narrowly averted, he trudged onward, still following the trail of his foes, until it led him to another mine shaft heading upward to the surface.

Wearily, he began to climb.

* * *

><p>At dawn, Satine lay half-awake, yet piercingly alert, watching the soft light refract and multiply in the crystal-fretted roof of the cave. In the numinous clarity of that light, she saw her own soul naked. Traitor. That is what the insurgency had named her, and she knew the accusation to be true. For if she were Mandalore – its embodiment, its queen – then she had had committed the vilest treason, flung wide the gates of her people's defense, and given over her cities and lands to a foreign power. She had called her hereditary enemy <em>lord<em> and willingly granted him dominion. And yet, in the same stunned breath with which she grasped this startling reality, she also knew herself to be the greatest of all Mandalorian warriors. She alone had achieved the impossible victory, made a conquest her proud forebears would not have dared to imagine. For here, in the gentle cradle of her arms, a Jedi lay totally surrendered.

At that moment, even as she stroked the drowsy head nestled so trustingly against her bosom, even as her soul resounded with the faint echoes of bliss, she knew with cold certainty that beyond this moment – because of it – both their futures would hold great suffering.


	9. Chapter 9

**Before the Throne**

**Chapter 9**

_"I live my life by the Jedi Code."_

_"And as Master Yoda says, attachment is forbidden."_

_"Yes…though he generally omits the undercurrent of remorse."_

_-Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker_

* * *

><p>Dawn broke, but it brought no radiance. The horizons were veiled by the retreating dust storm, by the approach of the next one. In the lull between the two onslaughts, the capitol city lay bathed in ruddy half-light, the dome smeared red by the glowering sun. The Force promised only destruction on this day. Kneeling, cognizant of the world outside although he was cocooned within the city's protective dome, Qui Gon stirred within the tranquility of his meditation. The present moment, the fullness of the living Force, brought him no peace. Today was fraught with death. In his mind's eye, the angry blaze of the day's beginning rose mournfully off a funeral pyre, stained with the blood of a young Jedi. He pushed away the rising sorrow. If today brought his own death, his own return to the Force, then there was no need to mourn. He and his Padawan, and all those who went before them here on this pitiless world, would soon enough be reunited.<p>

The shouting of someone outside in the sensory realm roused him. The young messenger boy from the palace came running. "Master Jinn!" he panted. "The lookout says somebody is approaching the west entrance, though it has not yet been a full day."

Qui Gon rose. So. The time was upon them already? He gripped his saber and followed the youth to the lookout's post, where a small knot of guards stood gathered about the gates. The energy barriers glowed red against the red sky, a haze of brewing trouble. Dimly, in the dust-laden air, he could make out the shape of a speeder bike.

"Shall we use defensive measures?" the captain asked. He was young, inexperienced. He looked to the Jedi master for guidance.

But there was no danger in the newcomer's presence. There was….

"Open the doors," Qui Gon ordered. When the confused Mandalorians did not move, he barked the order out again. "Open them. Now!"

To the astonishment of all present, to a reception of stunned silence, the Duchess and her escort returned to the capitol. Satine elegantly slid off the bike, drawing herself up straight as her guards and the messenger bowed deeply before her.

"Your grace!" the captain of the guard stammered. "We thought you had perished!"

"As you can see, I have not." she snapped. "Bring me a hover-sled. I must return to the palace. There is no time to delay." The guards hurried to obey, to call others to witness the astounding event, to send messages ahead to the court and the council, to call for others to take their posts. The sled was brought and the Duchess whisked off to her palace, where Almeck and Celot and the others would be waiting, their surprise only surpassed by their utter delight. The guards milled about, changed shifts, resealed the doors.

Qui Gon lingered, unbelieving. Obi Wan slowly dismounted the thrumming speeder bike, took a few paces forward, stopped. They stared at each other.

"I…did not think I would see you again," Qui Gon managed after a few seconds. "I _felt_ you die. Last night."

Obi Wan's pale, scratched face colored deeply. Strange emotion gleamed in his eyes, and he dropped his gaze. He seemed to struggle for words, but none came.

The tall man waited, his mind still reeling. He had felt it – the catastrophic extinction in the Force, the annihilating blaze of light, the emptiness afterward…He stiffened. "Padawan."

Obi Wan sank onto one knee before him, and held out his saber. "I have strayed," he said.

But Qui Gon refused to take the weapon, refused to accept the renunciation it implied. "Then you will find the path again," he said, firmly. _We will not go down this road. Never again. Stay with me, Padawan._

Obi Wan looked up, confused. The resentment of their last encounter still echoed dully in the Force, a persistent refrain. Frowning deeply, he slowly replaced the saber at his belt and found his feet. "I don't understand," he said.

"No, you don't," Qui Gon replied. It sounded harsh to his own ears. "Not yet." He stopped before he lost control again. He did not need to teach this lesson. It would come, as surely as the dust storm on the horizon. He must focus on the present moment. "There is no time for this. Right now, I need you."

The young Jedi's gaze drifted in the direction of the palace, where the Duchess's sled was dwindling to a speck shadowed by the capitol's tall structures, and then to the gates behind them. He nodded. "They will be here soon," he said. "As soon as the storm permits them to travel."

"I know. Obi Wan: they have already tried to destroy this whole city. If they come, and the court does not surrender, it will be all out war."

The Padawan's face darkened. "The Duchess will never surrender to them," he stated with certainty. "Bloodshed is inevitable."

Qui Gon folded his arms and sighed. "And thus ends her idealistic bid for peace."

"No, master. She will have peace. The insurgents will not prevail."

Qui Gon looked again at this young man standing before him. Not for the first time, he perceived a stranger- or a stranger and his Padawan, standing at once in the same place, speaking the same words. He knew that only one of these two would survive the day, that only one would remain when all was said. One, or neither. For it was more than possible that they would both fall before these gates. He sighed.

"Padawan – I wish to apologize to you. I should have listened to you before. I see now that you were attuned to the Force better than I was; this is indeed the turning point for Mandalore."

The Force rippled with shock and gratitude. "No, master, I was at fault. I acted without seeking your counsel – and I led the Duchess into a trap. We were nearly killed. I apologize for my arrogance."

Qui Gon gripped him hard by one shoulder. Obi Wan winced. "You are wounded."

An insouciant grin. "Souvenirs."

It was hardly the proper time to indulge in a chuckle, but it escaped Qui Gon anyway. The moment of levity quickly subsided.

"There is little time," he said, grimly.

Obi Wan nodded, eyes straying once more toward the palace. Then he deliberately turned his back upon it and faced the gates and the horizon beyond. "I'm ready, master. I'm glad that we will face this together."

"As am I." And it was true. Despite all that still remained unsaid, despite the disharmony that still ached in the Force, between them, around them, he was glad. He would face death with his Padawan by his side.

* * *

><p>Obi Wan knelt beside Qui Gon, submerged in the Force. They waited, for the moment of their death. On the horizon, dark silhouettes against the lowering red of the storm, the faint outlines of speeder bikes and other vehicles appeared, a small army on the march, wavering like a mirage in the shuddering air, the hot wind. Out of time, out of history, out of nightmare, the Mandalorina elite returned. They marched on their own city, determined to reclaim what was their own. They marched upon its defenders – a pair of Jedi, sworn to protect the innocent, the peace-loving. Neither would yield; and so, death approached. Fast. Certain. All-consuming.<p>

He had foreseen this moment before they landed. He had felt his end draw nigh, had thought it imminent before now. Again and again he had been spared, but he knew that the reprieve was finite; that in the end, there must be a reckoning. He was twenty years old. It was young for a human to die; even perhaps young for a Jedi to die. But he was satisfied. He held the universe complete within his heart. He had been granted from birth a greater share in life than most could dream of- for even before his own memory began, he could touch and be touched by the Force itself, by Life itself. Existence flowed through him, spoke to him, kindled his own small spark of life within its boundless flames. Who could ask for more? And he had been taught and trained to pour this radiance back out, in service to Life. It was not for him to complain if that service ended now, in one act of complete dedication.

And beyond this, he held Mandalore itself in his heart. He belonged at once wholly to the Force, and wholly to _her. _She was within him as he was within the Light. It could not be this way forever, he knew. It was impossible for him to live simultaneously as _hers_ and as a Jedi. But he did not ask for much longer. He knew it was impossible to live as both these; but it was possible to die as both at once. Today he fought as a Jedi, and he fought for her. He would die for the Force, and for _her. _He had been spared the choice, and all that the universe asked of him in return was that he lay down his life. For this moment, for this fullness and perfection, for this silent center in the storm of destiny, he was willing to pay the price.

Qui Gon stirred beside him, and they rose together, as one. Within the Force, master and student were one thing, one creature shaped by the light, one life seeking on the path, one heart wielding two blades. They rose and passed through the city's gates, and into the wind-whipped desert beyond, to face their enemies.

* * *

><p>Duchess Satine Kryze stood before the throne, facing the assembled court. The wide chamber beyond, and the paths leading to the palace, and the pedestrian plazas and the bombed and ruined arcades, and the crumbling rooftops and the shattered arches of public halls, were filled with her people. With Mandalore, weeping and shouting for peace. For an end to terror and war. For a new beginning. For a miracle.<p>

She stood and looked out upon her responsibility, upon the crushing burden. "People of Mandalore," she began. Quiet fell.

"Our future is shaped by our present. Our enemies approach, and demand surrender. We shall not yield to them." A cheer, a wild surge of indignation and anger.

"No!" she shouted out over the deafening clamor. "We shall not yield to their demands, nor shall we yield to _war._ We shall not offer resistance to their violence. The gates are sealed, the dome secure. Here let us remain and abide in _peace._ There will be no more violence in the name of life. Let them surrender to us, for peace is mightier than war."

The crowds stirred, the court grumbled. And yet the spell held. She stood erect, terror clawing in her breast even as she spoke the fearless words. If Aurrick Tor and his men broke through their defenses, many would die. She would certainly die. And all hope for Mandalore would perish as well. But if this was to be its last moment, she would have it be one of peace. She and her people would die without hatred, without violence. If they were slaughtered, then she at least would not meet hatred with hatred. Here, if only for a day or an hour, the cycle of history would be broken.

She stood firm, and her people - out of loyalty to her, out of respect for her words - waited with her. The time was drawing near.

* * *

><p>They were not men. They did not look like men; every one of them armored in <em>beskar, <em>their faces invisible behind the hawkish opaque visors of their helmets, they were supremely inhuman. In the Force, they did not feel like men. They felt like a legion of primordial demons, spat up from the legendary hells. Their spirits were forged by some secret and dark alchemy, honed to an impossible edge. They were Mando'a – superior, indomitable. Pitiless unto death.

"Steady," Qui Gon murmured. But Obi Wan could sense his master's own heart skip a beat, just as his had. And yet they did not quail, or back away.. They too were armored. They bore Light in their hands, and the Force was their shield. They too had been forged, crafted like the sabers they held, to be pure conduits, crystals to reflect and refract that Light. They were equal to the task…and not afraid. They were Jedi – wise, compassionate. Serene, even in death.

Aurrick Tor and Besh Kevvla led the assault force, both adorned with the half-cape of honor, of leadership. Behind them strode a dozen others. The group stopped a handful of paces away, in mocking silence.

"This is what the Duchess sends? I want the entire court and that filthy vixen here on their knees," Tor snarled. "The time is long past."

"We are not here to surrender to you," Qui Gon informed him.

Kevvla stepped forward alongside his brother. "Then the city will be destroyed," he threatened. "We have but to say the word."

"That is no longer true," the Jedi master corrected him. "The bombs you placed in the caves have been located and disarmed. Your threats hold no meaning anymore."

This infuriated the warriors gathered behind the two leaders. Their tense posture and the sharp movements of their heads and arms bespoke a simmering battle energy. Tor held up a hand, and his men froze, as one. "Then we will enter the city and take the palace by force," he said. "I make good on my promises, and I promised death to those who do not yield."

But the Jedi did not move. "We have a message for you," Obi Wan announced. "The Duchess Satine refuses you entrance to this city.. The people of Mandalore reject your claim to rulership and your empty threats. You are exiled and dishonored. You have one planetary cycle to leave the system."

Tor ripped off his helmet. A hard, lined face scowled down at the younger Jedi. Silver streaked his short-cropped hair, and deep-set eyes burned with disbelief and scorn. "What? She sends a Jedi to bear her messages? She had fallen far from the honor of her people. She stains the very name Mandalorian."

Obi Wan's saber flashed into hot life. The warriors behind Aurrick Torr leveled blasters.

"Step aside, Jedi. We enter this city now. If it must be over your dead bodies, then it will be." The company took a threatening step forward, in unison. Their blasters clicked and hummed, as fingers began to pull against delicate triggers. The Force tautened, grew turgid with malice.

"Coward," Obi Wan spat out. "You stand behind numbers. I thought Mandalorians were men, not sniveling dogs who run in packs. Perhaps all that I have heard at the Temple is true."

Qui Gon's hiss of indrawn breath was audible, but the harsh words certainly snared Besh Kevvla. He removed his helmet, his hair glinting in the reddish light as though stained with blood. "And what lies are those?"

Obi Wan flourished his blade in a wide circle. "That the Mando'a elite are nothing, man to man. You refused me an honor duel before, Kevvla. Will you only face an enemy who is chained? There is no courage or virtue in that."

"I have matched you hand to hand, whelp," Kevvla sneered.

"And ended bleeding on the floor," the Padawan taunted. "You are no warrior. You do not deserve to bear that armor."

Aurrick Torr restrained his brother with one gauntleted arm.

"Padawan," Qui Gon warned. "This is not the Jedi way." His hand grasped at the young man's shoulder.

"Let me teach this _filth_ a lesson in manners," Kevvla growled. "We will trample his blood into the dirt and grind it into his own face before he dies!"

"Forgive me, master."

"Very well," Tor consented. Kevvla shrugged away his hand, and jammed his helmet back over his face. He hefted a blaster in one hand and a thin vibroblade in the other.

Qui Gon let go. It was the will of the Force; the appointed trial. He could do nothing more. Dread settled in his gut, as he dropped his hand and stepped back. The dust storm grew louder, wailing over the empty plain as it roared toward the city.

* * *

><p>Obi Wan stood, in the center of a circle. The circle was comprised of Aurrick Tor , and the Mandalorian warriors, and Qui Gon. And it was composed of the distant hills and the ravening storm which drew ever closer, tightening its grip, closing in upon them. And the circle was made of the stars and nebulae overhead, invisible behind the curve of dakened atmosphere. And the circle was also the Jedi Council, and the Order, watching his every move, his every breath. And the circle was the drum of his own pulse as it thundered to its last moments, the dizzy whirl of his thoughts as he hurtled toward death. And the circle was also the burning loop of Besh Kevvla's own thoughts, the narrow thrumming circuit of his hatred and delusion. For here, on Mandalore, he was more than himself, more than a Jedi. He was also <em>hers,<em> and therefore of this blood, of this memory, of this path. He stood in himself and outside himself, divided and yet one. He saw himself through Kevvla's eyes, as the Force drew the circle tighter and tighter, until they were alone in the moment.

He saw an upstart, arrogant puppy, twelve or fifteen years younger than himself, a rootless stray abandoned by its own mother, given over to the filthy enemies of his people and suckled on lies and poisonous doctrine. He saw the thief that had come to steal his world's cheifest treasure, his birthright, the object of his most exquisite lust. He saw centuries of hatred embodied in one slight form, armed with one pathetic saber. Its blue light offended his depths. Something so elegant should not belong to such a perverse and unworthy creature. He saw the storm , and he felt its wrath stir in his own blood, until he howled with it and his vision was smeared red with swirling dust and bitter hate. He leapt forward to kill himself.

Locked in combat, in mortal struggle, he felt the strikes of the saber blade as they glanced harmlessly off the _beskar, _staggered, fired shots – shots meant to distract, to confuse, to tire the enemy out, He rolled and leapt and kicked and punched. He went flying as invisible power knocked his breath away, sent him crashing to the hard earth. He felt his anger swell, limitless as the storm, and he lunged back into battle, the thin blade always ready, always seeking. The saber flashed, spun, rained down upon him, sparks leaping about him as the edge scored deep in his armor, scarring and burning but not breaking. He felt the scars of old hatred reopened, felt a fresh flood of hate, struck blows with renewed frenzy, caught his foe in the chin, and then the jaw, and then the groin, the stomach, watched in glee as he toppled over. He jumped in, murder screaming in his veins, and buried the thin, thin dagger in his opponent's ribs – felt the thrill of frustration as the blow slipped to the side, dragged against flesh, against bone, hit the stony ground beneath. A foot smashed into his head and he reeled backward.

Pain flooded thorugh him, raw and ragged. The strange double vision shattered and melted, and Obi Wan was no longer Kevvla. He was only himself, and he pressed one hand to his bleeding side, the other gripping his saber hilt tightly. The Force roared behind his temples, in his pulse. Throbbing agony broke his breath into short, hard gasps. The Mandalorians were shouting, leering. His blood spattered onto the red soil. He looked down, detached. He looked at Qui Gon, whose eyes bored into his own, bright with urgency. The Jedi master's hand was on his own saber hilt; the Mandalorian's hands were on their blasters. Kevvla laughed at him, shifted in place, taunting.

He let go of the wound, welcomed the rush of the Force as it gathered within him, ready to receive him back. He launched himself at Kevvla, fearless. He was already dead – what had he to lose? The blade flashed, danced, carved a path through every defense. Kevvla's helmet was burned, dented, knocked clean off his head. He stumbled back. His weapons were severed, knocked from his grip. He fell to one knee. The saber's blade touched his neck - thrummed hot against his white, vulnerable throat.

Kevvla looked up, full of contempt. "You are not man enough to kill me," he laughed.

Obi Wan stood, bleeding. Red droplets stained his boots, scattered in the dust. The storm raged closer, closer. Lightning arced down, striking hilltops, splitting rock. Dust rose and licked at them, flaying exposed skin, rattling on cold armor. He could take Kevvla with him; he could _kill_ this evil man.

The Code forbade it.

He could still do it; he was dead anyway; he was a fallen Jedi, he had wandered off the path already. The Force was silent, waiting his decision. His blood dripped at his own feet, weeping red tears. His heart hammered, and the storm grew ever closer. Lightning glanced off the dome and spattered on the stones around them. Dust and grit tore at his eyes, his hair. Nobody moved.

_She _deplored violence; _she _loved peace above all things.

For her sake, he stayed his hand. The saber blade disappeared.

Kevvla pounced, knocking him backward, his gauntleded fists flying in rage. Qui Gon leapt forward, green blade singing, deflecting the hail of blaster shots directed at him, at the Padawan crushed beneath Kevvla's onslught; lightning flashed, so close that the ground trembled beneath them, the air stank of ozone and carbon. Obi Wan threw Kevvla backward, rolled over, blood smearing along the harsh ground, saw the crack opening before them, dust and pebbles cascading into the chasm, the tiny fissure yawning wider, wider…

Another flash of lightning.

The Hells opened up. Mighty gouts of flame erupted, in searing columns of fire, as the deep subterranean gases found their outlet and exploded into freedom, igniting, blazing with the contained wrath of the planet. Aurrick Torr was consumed in the first blast. The Mandolaorians shouted, cursed in their native language, ran. Qui Gon heaved his Padawan to his feet. The Force surged, warped, swelled around them, lurid with danger. Stumbling, leaping, they fled from death. The ground cracked, splintered, opened up. Fire spurted, the air shook. A lightning bolt struck the earth just where a fissure opened—

-the Jedi were thrown backward, upward, through the air and against the dome's surface by the shockwave. The Force was filled with fire and the screams of the men below. The storm was upon them in all its fury; wind and lightning conspired to tear flesh from bone. Qui Gon held it off with the Force, shielding himself, shielding Obi Wan, as they slid back to earth, as they half-fell through the gates and into the city's protection.

He dropped to his knees inside the energy barrier, gripping Obi Wan hard, his hands covered in his Padawan's blood, his eyes riveted on the scene beyond the shimmering field. The earth cracked, fire burned, and the Hells took back their own. The men, their vehicles, all traces of the battle, collapsed in a slow avalanche into the bowels of the planet. And ash fell like gentle snow, whirled on the dust, whipped hither and thither, fluttering over the graveyard of their foes.

Obi Wan coughed, groaned, leaned heavily against him. Qui Gon held fast, stunned. They were alive. They were victorious.

Outside, the storm raged and white ash drifted ever downward.

Mandalore would have peace at last.


	10. Chapter 10

**Before the Throne**

**Chapter 10**

_A Jedi shall know not anger. Nor hatred. Nor love._

* * *

><p>Qui Gon Jinn peered out the ship's viewport one last time. Docked high above the city's expanse, ready to depart from a high exit in the dome, the craft afforded him a view of the partially ruined capitol, and of the mighty half-sphere that sheltered all beneath its generous curve. There, below him, the people of Mandalore began the hard work of rebuilding their world. The Duchess had already been formally reinvested in her office, and had spent the last days establishing a temporary government, emergency services, new protocols. Qui Gon had seen her but little in this time, but had advised the newly restored Parliament as best he could. The planet was taking its first tottering steps on the path to peace. It was time for the Jedi to depart.<p>

Or at least, for one of them to depart. The tall master sighed and gripped the back of the pilot's seat. The ship was on standby, all systems primed and ready. A gift of the Mandalorian government, it was the most elegant, well maintained vehicle he had seen in well over a year – a desperate year of running, hiding, and fighting. It was a fitting way to make a tired but triumphant return to the Temple. He did not relish the prospect of compiling a mission report spanning the events of fifteen months…but such details faded to inconsequence in light of the true difficulty.

He would return without a Padawan in tow.

He had seen little of Obi Wan in the past days, either. The young Jedi had proved marvelously adept at evasion, and uncharacteristically reclusive when he set his mind to it. The medics had done a serviceable job with his wound; he had seemed to obey their injunction to rest and recuperate with a diligence never before displayed in the Temple's healing ward, or anywhere else in the galaxy. Qui Gon was not fooled; he knew that the long days had been spent in meditation, and an extended agony of decision.

He only hoped that Obi Wan would do him the courtesy – would show enough affection and gratitude – to bid him farewell in person. It was all he hoped for. The conclusion was foregone. He had seen the indomitable sway the Duchess held over his student, had felt the forbidden bonds which united the two young people, the deadly and invisible wounds for which there was no cure but worse pain. He knew; he had been touched by it himself, once. He did not wish it upon any other living being.

He had known that the Force intended a trial. He had known what was at stake. But now, faced with his lonely departure, he found it hard to grasp the reality. He had now lost three Padawans: one to death, on to the Dark side, and one to love. If he was honest, he would admit to himself that Obi Wan, his latest and most troublesome student, his most talented, most self-doubting, most impudent, most charming student, had after all been his favorite. And he was perhaps glad that the kindest fate had fallen to the young man's lot. There were more terrible destinies, he reasoned….and yet the Force seemed to ring with a hollow sense of waste, of shame.

What had he done wrong?

Or had it been out of his hands from the very beginning, the very moment they had walked into the throne room fifteen months ago, when Satine and his Padawan had first laid eyes upon each other? He might never know. All that he had was the present moment…and in this moment, he waited to say good-bye. He would not allow himself to think beyond that.

* * *

><p>Obi Wan Kenobi did not understand. He was supposed to be dead. And yet, he was not. The knew that he would lay his life down here, on Mandalore, and yet he had not. Was the event in the future, even now? Even at the end of the mission? Even when peace had been at long last established, a dream realized, a new beginning already under way, even before the first story was properly concluded?<p>

He felt…cheated. But that was unworthy. The Force owed him nothing. And now it seemed to have abandoned him utterly. For three days he had tried to meditate, to achieve some measure of peace, to seek counsel from the light. To find peace, and wisdom, and some answers, to guide him on his way. He was met with a wall of blank silence. He was on his own, left abandoned to make his own choice.

And yet he knew that the Force still surrounded him. Waiting.

He gathered the folds of his borrowed cloak about his shoulders for the last time, and rose. Qui Gon would leave within the hour. He must decide his own fate, for the Force offered him no help. Perhaps that in itself was an abundant sign. He went to find the Duchess.

She was in her private garden, wandering the overgrown path that wended among the shattered statuary and the ruined fountains. She hoped to restore it to its former beauty, someday, when time allowed. It symbolized the planet and her people, a living testament ot the fragility and resilience of life. She saw him coming and paused, beside the empty basin of the central fountain.

He silently wound his way through the crumbling hedge labyrinth, to its very center.

They did not speak; and still the Force said nothing. Satine held out a hand, and he grasped the delicate fingers, raised them formally to his lips. The silence between them grew, multiplied, pooled. Memory stirred, and fluttered in the silent Force. And still there was no answer, no sign, no guidance. He sighed. He must choose.

"Master Jinn is prepared to depart," Satine informed him, though he already knew this. "The dust storm had finally passed. Flight conditions are excellent."

He drowned in her eyes again. He sank helpless into the depths, obedient to her whim. They were one thing. Their hearts, their minds, their bodies were one thing. All that remained to seal their unity, to compact their life into an everlasting alliance, come what may, was the unsaid. A simple act of will, of conscience, of spoken admission, and they would be bound forever, even unto death.

They said nothing.

Silently, he prayed for her to say the word. Would she but utter the damning phrase, he would yield utterly, kneel before her, surrender and be undone, pour out his life, sever his braid, relinquish his saber, and commit himself her service, to her dream of peace.

_Say the word._

But she did not. Her eyes held his, and in their empyrean depths he saw her hesitate, mercy welling in her heart. For she knew it would kill him; and she could not strike the final blow.

_Kill me,_ he begged. _Say the word._

She said nothing. She would not take his life. She could not, for she ….she …he could not say it, either, not on her behalf, Not on his own. She would not make the choice for him, It was his to make; his trial; his death.

At that moment the Force broke its long vow of silence and spilled over the edge of awareness, unfurling a vision before his trembling senses, illumining the scene. It showed him two paths, two futures. On one hand, he saw Satine, and Mandalore restored. He saw a throne room, and loyal men, and great deeds, and long struggle, and great joy. And small children, some with white hair, some with chestnut. And laughter echoed along this path, and contentment, and warmth, and joy, and fulfillment. It beckoned, and called, and sang within the Force, a bright promise.

And on the other hand, along the other branch of a crossroads, he saw warfare, and destruction, and betrayal, and exile, and sorrow, and loneliness, and loss, and grief. And crushing burdens, and pain, and regret, and endless endless striving, and temptation and exhaustion. It loomed darkly, cold and unremitting. And the Force burned within the heart of this nightmare, gently commanding, but promising nothing.

He understood at last. His belly clenched; his breath stopped. He was to die here after all. By his own hand. The choice was his. Satine watched him, motionless.

He did it for the Force. He did it for the Light. He laid his very life down.

Heart shattering to barbed fragments, to bleeding dust, he bowed. "Farewell, Duchess."

Satine sank in a small curtsey, color leaving her face, and life leaving her as swiftly as it fled his own soul. He died, and she died with him, their pain mingling and pooling in the empty basin, the unsaid still echoing between them.

"Farewell, Obi Wan Kenobi."

And that was all they said. He walked away, not daring to turn, to listen, to reach through the Force toward the woman who had been, for the briefest of eternities, his other half.

He did not look back.

* * *

><p>Satine Kryze did not weep.<p>

She was the ruler of Mandalore, of a new people, a new world. She bore the weight of her race upon her shoulders, was charged with the burden of leadership. She was the heir of conquerors, the scion of a long line of noblemen. She was Satine Kryze of Kalevala, a queen, an empress, Duchess by title, absolute monarch by the will of her people. She did not weep.

She retired instead to her private chamber and laid her soul, her heart, her identity beyond the rigid confines of duty and birth, to rest upon its pyre. Let her never again be Satine, a woman, an individual. Let her simply be the Duchess, be Mandalore. She set the pyre aflame with her resolution. Let her deeds be her only children, her planet her only progeny. Let peace be her only love, her only lover.

She needed no other. Her other was dead.

The pyre burned, and in the clear consuming flames she saw a new vision. The capital would be restored, in transparent crystal. Let it be a city of light. Let there be no shadows within its walls, for only in her breast, where her heart had once been, would shadow fall. And that too could be purged away, the memory cleansed, the wound left behind by that bright blue saber, those bright blue eyes, utterly healed and forgotten. Mandalore would prosper. She would give her whole life to it, be wedded to this one purpose, until she died. And then her body would but rejoin her soul.

When the pyre had burned out, and the flames cooled, she left her heart in ashes and rose.

She returned to duty, and to the throne.

She did not weep.

* * *

><p>Qui Gon startled when the ship's hatch opened and a lone figure ascended the ramp, stopping in the small passenger compartment behind the cockpit. He clenched his fingers into a fist, lest their trembling betray him. It was time to say farewell.<p>

"Obi Wan." He looked at his Padawan…or former Padawan, eyes traveling over the stained and worn clothing, the saber still hanging at the young man;s belt, the long braid still trailing behind one ear, over his shoulder, down to his waist. He wanted to remember this picture, a single moment from a present that was soon to shatter and dissolve into the past. When Obi Wan said nothing in reply, he looked up into a haggard face, into eyes that were soft, liquid with pain.

Qui Gon suppressed all emotion. Let this be brief and to the point. "I must leave," he said. "I have delayed long enough."

"Yes, master." Obi Wan's voice was dull, carefully contained.

The tall man waited another moment. "Well?" he said, impatience getting the batter of him. _Strike the blow and have done with it._

"I'm ready, master." Obi Wan sat down on the narrow bench. No – he sank down, as though weak-kneed. He looked a little pale.

Qui Gon blinked, The Force nudged at him. _Old fool._

"Obi Wan?"

The young Jedi looked up at him again, as though dazed. "I'm ready to depart, master. For Coruscant."

Now it was Qui Gon's turn to feel dazed. What? He sat down beside the Padawan, his mind sluggishly coming to grips with the sudden reversal, the unexpected turnabout. He still had much to learn about Obi Wan Kenobi, it would seem.

"The Duchess…" he began.

"I have said farewell to her ladyship," Obi Wan answered, with perfect poise. Inhuman, calm control. Absolute flawless reserve.

Qui Gon regarded him closely, a great upswelling of gratitude to the Force, of relief, of joy, threatening to overwhelm him. It was followed by an even greater swell of pity. _Oh, my dear sweet boy. _

The trial had been passed. The test had been severe, merciless. The sacrifice had been made, and had exacted its price in pain, in sorrow, in what would be life-long regret. Qui Gon understood, and saw clearly the outcome. Beside him sat not his Padawan, not the stranger he had encountered on Mandalore, but a new person, forged from both. Beside him, slumped a little, disheveled, unshaven, weary, at a loss for words, sat a truly great Jedi. A magnificent Jedi.

Qui Gon had to search for his voice. Eventually he found it. "Padawan," he began again, marveling anew at the Force's ruthlessness, at its depth and profundity, at its power.

The young man interrupted him. "I strayed," he said. "And you said I would find the path again." He paused, looking at his hands. "I did, master." He looked up at Qui Gon, that flawless control still holding firm. "It was difficult."

The Jedi master reached up, took the tip of the learner's braid between his fingers. "There is much I cannot include in the Council report," he replied. He waited for the words, and their implied promise, to sink in. "But I wish you to know, young one, that in my eyes, in some ways, you have earned your knighthood today."

The words nearly cracked the Padawan's reserve, but after a moment's struggle he manged a very grave nod. "Thank you, master. I am sorry….to have made so much trouble. I –"

"No more," Qui Gon warned him. He rose and made final adjustments to the flight computer, set the system to full automatic. They lifted off, cleared the dome, rose into the atmosphere. After a while, Qui Gon returned to the rear compartment.

They were going home. The mission was complete. They would move onward together. There was nothing more to say. And yet there was. .

Qui Gon leaned forward, wrapping his arms about his student in a sudden and fiercely protective embrace. Surprised, grateful, too shocked to object, Obi Wan pressed close against him. His breath hitched. Qui Gon tightened his grip. And he held his Padawan, his friend, his son, firm in the Light of an age-old tradition, safe in the boundless compassion of the Living Force, as the young man sobbed his broken heart out.

They never spoke of her again.

FINIS


End file.
